Seen in German 



y 



Seen in Germany 



By 
Ray Stannard Baker 

Author of 
"Our New Prosperity," "The Boy's Book of Inventions 




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New York 

McCLURE, PHILLIPS 

& COMPANY 

MCMI 



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,007311901 



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59 

APR 4 1946 

Serial Record Uivislon 
The Llbrtn «* Conflrew 

McClure, Phillips & Company 



October, 1901 



TO 

MY FATHER 



CONTENTS 



Page 
I. Common Things Seen in Germany 3 

How the German is governed in Small Affairs — 
The Omniscient Policeman — Bowing — Shops 
— Beer-Drinking — Barnum's Circus — Idea of 
Americans — Machinery Age 

II. The Kaiser « . 37 

His Personality and his Passions 

III. The German Private Soldier 6i 

Who he is and How he is Made 

IV. A View of the German Workingman ... 97 

His Daily Life, his Earnings, his Wife, his Food, 
his Clothing, his Problems, and his Relations 
with his Government 

V. A German Professor 133 

Professor Ernst Haeckel of Jena 

VL A Typical Scientific Institution 161 

The Physical and Technical Institute at Charlotten- 
burg 



viii Contents 

Page 
VII. How THE Germans created a New Industry . 197 

The Glass and Lens Manufactories of Jena 

VIII. A German Venture in Practical Philanthropy . 227 
Professor Abbe and his Proht-Sharing System 

IX. How THE Germans build Ships 237 

The Vulcan Shipyard of Stettin 

X. Some New Educational Ideas in Germany . . 273 

A Commercial University — History-Teaching by 
Object- Lessons, School Gardens 

XI. A Glimpse of German Student Life .... 287 
A Corps Duel at Wollnitz 

XII. The New Germany 313 

Her Prosperity and her Problems 



ILLUSTRATIONS 

Page 
Frontispiece 

A German Policeman 9 

Children's Sand Pile in Dresden, supported by the 

City 13 

Outdoor Drinking Resort for German Students . . 19 
Woman and Dog as Beasts of Burden, a Familiar 

German Sight 23 

A German Double-Deck Tram-Car 29 

The German Kaiser 39 

The Kaiser and Kaiserin 44 

The German Crown Prince 47 

The Kaiser among His Officers 50 

Present Arms . , 67 

The Goose Step 69 

Company Tailors 71 

Drill on the Horizontal Bar , 74 

Bayonet Practice 77 

Pontoon Bridge Building 79 

Rifle Practice with Miniature Target 82 

Cavalrymen Tilting with Muffled Lances .... 85 

Coat Inspection 88 

The Soldier's Hour Off 90 

Uniformed Street Sweepers lOi 



X 



Illustrations 



Page 

Returning from Work — German Ship Yards . . . 105 

Noon Hour ^^o 

A Typical German Workman 120 

Public Bath House in Chemnitz 128 

Haeckel's Laboratory, Jena 137 

Haeckel at his Microscope 141 

Schiller's Lane, Jena I44 

Professor Ernst Haeckel, drawn from life by George 

Varian I49 

Professor Haeckel lecturing in his Class Room . . 153 
General View of the Reichsanstalt Building, in Char- 

lottenburg 167 

Prof. Dr. Kohlrausch, President of the Reichsanstalt 173 
Dr. Day Experimenting with Thermometers . . . 179 
Professor Hagen, Director of the Technical Depart- 
ment of the Reichsanstalt 182 

Testing Thermometers 183 

Measuring the Candle-Power of Electric Lamps . . 185 

Making Crucibles 198 

Removing the Crucible from the Furnace .... 200 

Pouring Molten Glass into Lens Mould .... 203 

Putting Crucible into Cooling Furnace 206 

Sealing up Cooling Furnace 208 

Polishing a Great Telescope Lens 210 

In the Jena Glass Works. Blowing Chemical Glass 214 
Blowing and Drawing Thermometer Tubes — the 

Most Perfect in the World 219 

Professor Abbe 228 

Shipping the Rudder ... ^ ^ ..... . 238 



Illustrations xi 

Page 
The " Deutschland " six months after her keel was 

laid. Showing the keel, ribs, the second, or 

"false" bottom, and the girders which are to 

support the decks 254 

Bending a Ship's Rib 257 

Captain Albers of the " Deutschland" 261 

One of the Piston Heads of the "Deutschland" . . 267 

Children at Work in School Garden 277 

A Lesson in Tree Planting 281 

In the Leipzig School Garden 283 

The Inn at Wollnitz 289 

Interior of a Corps Room where Drinking Bouts are 

held . . . , 295 

An Outdoor " Mensur" or Duel 299 

A University Corps House 305 



SEEN IN GERMANY 



COMMON THINGS 




I 



COMMON THINGS SEEN IN GERMANY 

How the German is governed in Small Affairs — The 
Omniscient Policeman — Bowing — Shops — Beer- 
drinking — Barnum's Circus — Idea of Americans 
— Machinery Age 

THE American who travels in Germany soon 
makes the discovery that he has never 
known what it really means to be governed. 
He has always felt a calm assurance in the 
superiority of his system of public administration, and 
he has paid with liberality for the privilege of having 
a President, a Governor, a Mayor, and a Ward Boss, 
yet he has hardly known that he was governed ! But 
there is no such uncertainty here in the Fatherland. 
For every pfennig that the German pays in taxes, he 
expects and receives a pfennig's worth of government. 
He enjoys being looked after, and if he fails to hear 
the whirring of the wheels of public administration, he 
feels that something has gone wrong. 



Seen in Germany 



From the moment of landing on German soil, the 
American begins to feel a certain spirit of repression 
which seems to pervade the land. At first it gives 
him an uncomfortable impression of being watched; 
he feels the Wild West in him slowly suffocating : he 
had not realized before that he was especially wild 
western. But he soon finds that his attitude of mind 
is undergoing a change. The brooding spirit of gov- 
ernment no longer harasses him, and he finds himself 
engaged in a humorous quest for what is " verboten."^ 
He begins to see the philosophy of all this govern- 
ment ; it relieves him of a load of responsibility to 
have his conduct made clear for him by rules and 
regulations. He feels grateful to the government 
that informs him in a plainly printed sign that the 
water in this trough is for horses, not for men. In 
America he would be compelled to decide for himself, 
and he might make the mistake of allowing his horse 
to drink from a man*s trough. When he walks in 
the park it is a comfort to have the seats labeled 
clearly, " For Children," " For Nurses with Children 
Only," and " For Adults Only." Thus the stranger 
goes through Germany learning rules, and after a time 
it becomes a passion to trace out all the minute rami- 
fications of administrative supervision. One may 
travel a long time in Germany and go home with the 
comfortable feeling that there are still undiscovered 

^ Verboten^ forbidden. 



Common Things 



regulations awaiting another visit. There is one 
drawback, however, to the full enjoyment of the quest. 
It may be expressed in a simple rule : Always 
discover the " verbcten " before you are discovered. 
This rule, if observed, will save the traveler much an- 
noyance. An absent-minded friend of mine crossed 
a bridge at Stettin on the left side, not knowing that this 
was one of the " verbotens." He was taken with much 
solemnity before a magistrate and fined fifty pfennigs 
(twelve cents). He felt that the experience was cheap 
at the price. The best way to discover '' verbotens " 
is to ride on a bicycle ; they appear painted large at 
every turn, and if you ride far enough you will con- 
clude that all the especially interesting by-ways are 
particularly " verboten " and that " verboten " is a 
kind of profanity used by German policemen. 

I never have seen the statute books of Germany, 
but they must be voluminous beyond comparison, for 
there is a law regulating almost every conceivable 
human activity. If a thing is not mentioned in the 
law books, it is to be presumed that it has no existence. 
As a consequence, odd things happen in Germany. 
Early in the year 1900 a company of capitalists began 
operating automobile 'buses in Berlin, big glittering 
caravans which tooted up and down the streets like 
so many steam locomotives, running at a rate of speed 
much greater than that of the ordinary trams. 

Theoretically, the German dislikes being hurried, 



Seen in Germany 



but practically and individually he is quite as pleased 
as the American to save five or ten minutes on the 
journey to his office in the morning. As a result, 
the new automobiles did such a flourishing business 
that the other tram companies, which had long been 
compelled by stringent laws to limit the speed of their 
cars, made complaint to the police. 

There must have followed a great searching of the 
statute books. Every sort of vehicle from a wheel- 
barrow up was mentioned and regulated, but there was 
not a word about the automobile 'bus. Consequently 
there was nothing to do but to let it pursue its wild 
career until such time as a law could be devised and 
passed. And this, like everything in connection with 
the government, was a matter of deliberation, so that 
by the time authoritv was bestowed upon the police 
to limit the speed of the new vehicles, the automobile 
company had cut in on its competitors and had 
firmly established its position. Exactly the same 
thing happened when the bicycle was first introduced 
in Germany. For months bicycle riders rode when 
and where they pleased, tipped over pedestrians and 
generally demoralized the police ; now they are regu- 
lated out of all comfort. There is a great fortune 
awaiting the Yankee who will introduce flying ma- 
chines in Germany, and sell out before the machinery 
of the law overtakes him. 

A stranger in Germany soon makes the acquaint- 



Common Things 7 

ance of the police, little as he may desire it. A 
German socialist once said: "It takes half of all 
the Germans to control the other half," and one 
who sees Germany's immense army, her cloud of 
officials, great and small, and her omniscient police- 
man, is inclined to believe that the socialist was 
right. You have been in Germany a week, more 
or less, when the policeman calls. At first you 
cannot believe that he is really after you, and then 
your mind runs back guiltily over your past. He 
takes out his little book, one of a small library 
of little books which he carries in his blouse, and 
inquires your age, your nationality, and how long 
you intend to stay. You learn subsequently that 
a record of every person in the empire is carefully 
kept, with full details as to his occupation, material 
wealth, and social standing. If you move into a 
new house, you must notify the police; if you move 
out, you must notify the police; if you hire a servant 
girl, you must purchase a yellow blank and report 
the fact, the girl also making a report. When she 
leaves, you must send in a green blank stating 
why she is dismissed, where she is going, and so 
on. If you fail in any one of these multitudinous 
requirements of the government, — and I have men- 
tioned only a few of them, — there is a fine to pay, 
each fine graduated to the enormity of the offence. 
There are offences graded as low as two cents. 



8 Seen in Germany 

This paternal system of watchfulness and super- 
vision by the poHce has made every German neigh- 
borhood a sort of whispering gallery. Within a 
few days after you move into new apartments, you 
find that nearly every one in the block, from the 
milkman up, knows who you are, what your busi- 
ness is, and how long you expect to remain, and 
your place in the social scale is fixed once for all 
with mathematical precision. And directly you 
begin to pay taxes, for the police have learned, in 
some mysterious manner, just how much money 
you have in the bank, and where it comes from ; 
if you are earning a salary they also hear about 
that, and all these facts speedily reach your neigh- 
bors. A New England town with two sewing 
societies is not to be compared for an instant with 
a German neighborhood tor sociability. 

On the other hand, the labeling and cataloguing of 
the population enables the police to watch the crimi- 
nal classes and to keep them in subjection to an 
extent quite astonishing. German cities are safer for 
strangers, perhaps, than any other in the world. In 
the same way, close police supervision in the matter 
of garbage-disposal, street litter, sewage, and so on, 
has been a factor in giving Germany a well-deserved 
reputation for clean, healthy cities. I have seen a 
policeman stop a man, and order him to pick up a 
bit of paper which he had thrown into the street. 




A German Policeman 



10 Seen in Germany 

And there is this comforting thing to be said 
about the activity of the police. In America the 
other man is always elbowing you in street cars, 
crowding in ahead of you at the theatre ticket- 
window, and in general making city life uncomfort- 
able. But the German has regulated the other 
man into comparative respectability. For instance, 
each 'bus and car is plainly labeled on the outside 
with the number of seats that it contains, and 
signs on the front and rear platforms show how 
many persons may find standing room after the 
seats have all been occupied. And when once the 
car is filled, not another person is allowed to enter. 

You see, also, on the end of each car a little 
metallic rack with numbered compartments where 
smokers may leave their cigars as they enter. In 
the same methodical way the government opera- 
houses are provided with long passageways in front 
of the ticket-windows, just wide enough to admit 
one person, so that in case of a crush to buy tickets 
there is never any jostling or pvishing, and the 
new-comer must always take his place at the foot 
of the line. 

Another rule in some cities requires an opera- 
goer who takes a cab to pay the driver his fare 
in advance, so that there may be no crowding and 
delays of the cabs at the door of the opera-house. 
Indeed, the whole cab-service of Germany is regu- 



Common Things 1 1 

lated in a way to make the American envious 
of German institutions. In most cities a large 
proportion of the cabs are provided with " tax- 
ameters " — Httle dials placed in front of the seat 
and so arranged that they indicate just how much 
the passenger owes at any given time. For instance, 
when you take a cab in Berlin the indicator shows a 
charge of fifty pfennigs (twelve cents) as soon as you 
take your seat, and as you drive the figures change, 
ten pfennigs at a time, and when you are ready 
to stop you pay the sum indicated by the dial, 
no more, no less. Thus there is no chance for 
extortion on the part of the cabman, and no dis- 
agreement as to charges, a feature of disagreeable 
prominence in London and Paris. And it may 
be said in passing, that the charges are generally 
very low compared with those in American cities. 
Indeed, there are not many things in Germany 
that the government does not own or control, or 
at least influence. When you travel, you must buy 
your ticket of the government, for the government 
owns all the railroad lines, you eat government sand- 
wiches at the station, you send a telegram over 
government wires. Your letters, of course, go by 
government post, but so do your express packages, 
and it may be said for the Germans that their con- 
veniences for sending packages and money by mail 
are much nearer perfect than ours. In America, 



I 2 Seen in Germany 

the influence of those mighty corporations, the 
express companies, has prevented the development 
in the highest degree of our postal system. In 
Germany, one may send a package of almost any 
size by mail at rates astonishingly low compared 
with those of our express service. Packages may 
also be ordered and sent C. O. D. by mail, for 
a small fee, the postman collecting the money 
from the purchaser and returning it to the seller, — 
a system which greatly facilitates business in the 
empire by doing away with much letter-writing, 
and the expense of mailing bills and checks. In 
the same way the Germans have perfected an un- 
equaled system for the quick delivery of messages 
in large cities. In Berlin, one may purchase what is 
known as a rohr-postcard for twenty-five pfennigs 
(six cents), write a message containing as many words 
as the card will hold, and it will be specially delivered 
almost anywhere in the city within an hour. It 
is better by far and cheaper than the telephone, 
for only comparatively few people have telephones ; 
it is quicker and much less expensive than the 
telegraph. Indeed, there is probably no system 
in operation in the world which is at once so 
universally of service to rich and poor, so prompt 
and so cheap. It is much used for making all sorts 
of appointments and in all manner of business trans- 
actions. There is a great opportunity, certainly^ 



'A> 



:r 



Common Things 



n 



for such a convenience in American cities ; but 
the power and influence of our great telegraph and 
telephone corporations will probably prevent its 




Children s Sand Pile in Dresden, supported by the City 

introduction for a long time to come. It may be 
said in passing, also, that ordinary postal cards 
may be sent in German cities for two pfennigs — less 
than half a cent. 

In Germany, the government owns the greatest 



\ ^ 



14 Seen in Germany 

opera-houses, and if you would hear the best music, 
you must listen to musicians who are paid from the 
public treasury. A government minister preaches 
in the government-owned church that you attend 
on Sunday, and if you are a student in a university, 
the professor who lectures to you is a government 
official. Sometimes you can even trace the govern- 
ment inspector's stamp on the chop served at your 
restaurant. And you are not at all surprised to see 
children playing in municipal sandpiles in the parks 
of Dresden. Then there are the cherries, — the big 
luscious red cherries which come when you order 
a compot with your meat. These, you hear, are 
called Reichskirschen, " Imperial Cherries," and you 
learn that the government has embarked, with rare 
frugality, in the business of fruit-raising. Along 
each side of the government railroad tracks there 
is a strip of land which is utilized in places by 
planting with rows of cherry-trees. These are culti- 
vated with care, and no improper little German boys 
ever climb up and steal the fruit. In the summer 
the empire or the kingdom gathers its cherry crop, 
and takes it to market, and later the imperial cherries 
appear as a compot to delight the German palate, 
and suggest the all-sufficiency of the governmental 
machinery. The profits are credited in the state 
revenues. I did hear that an account was kept 
with each separate cherry-tree, but one is not com- 



Common Things i^ 

pelled to believe all he hears, even though it be 
characteristic. 

All government in Germany smacks strongly of the 
military camp. Many of the officials, especially those 
of the lower grades, — such as policemen, firemen, and 
so on, — are old soldiers who have won their places in 
civil life by years of faithful service as noncommis- 
sioned officers in the army. They have all the 
methodical habits of the barracks, and very naturally 
they look upon the public as a great awkward squad 
to be cajoled into subjection and proper discipline. 
The awkward squad in this case submits the more 
easily because every man in Germany has served his 
time in the army, and knows how to put up with the 
exactions of noncommissioned martinets. Indeed, 
the exactness and order, the minuteness of regulation, 
and the infinite detail of military life pervades the 
entire social fabric of Germany. Everything, from 
beer-drinking up, goes by rule, and most of these 
rules have been set forth in books or pamphlets with 
the characteristic thoroughness of the Teuton. 

I shall not soon forget the dazzling effect presented 
by a fine-looking, soldierly German whom I saw 
coming down Unter den Linden at noonday in a 
full dress suit, a tall hat, and white kid gloves. No 
one seemed at all surprised at his appearance, and I 
learned afterward that he was probably some new gov- 
ernment official going to pay his respects to his chief, 






1 6 Seen in Germany 

and that every detail of his costume was prescribed in 
the written order that summoned him. A foreigner 
in Germany is certain to make the most amusing mis- 
takes in the matter of formaHty and informality of 
dress. It may be said in passing that a German set 
dinner is a horror of formality, but it is quite worth 
while, for the excellence of the French cooking. On 
the other hand, a Germ.an beer-dinner is the acme of 
sociability and kindliness, a kind of easy familiarity and 
simple enjoyment, by the side of which almost any 
English or American dinner is icy with dignity. For 
the Germans know how to enjoy their food and drink. 

An English lady, the wife of a famous scientist,' 
gave me an amusing account of her experience at a 
reception given by the wife of a German professor. 
As soon as she came into the room, she was invited 
to a place on a huge, soft sofa standing in a promi- 
nent place at one side of the room. She much 
preferred a chair, not only because it would be less 
conspicuous, but much more comfortable. But when 
she would have taken an empty chair, to her aston- 
ishment it was promptly removed and occupied by 
one of the German women, and she was finally com- 
pelled to take a seat on the sofa. Presently another 
English lady of rank appeared, and the wife of the 
scientist was promptly invited to leave the sofa and 
take a chair, and the new-comer, by hook and crook, 
was induced to occupy the sofa. 



Common Things 17 



Afterward all these proceedings were made plain : 
the sofa was the place of honor beyond all others, and 
it must be occupied by the most important lady pres- 
ent, whether she liked it or not. 

Then there is the fine art of bowing. In Germany, 
you lift your hat to men as well as to women. If 
you meet General Schmoller, you raise your hat high 
and bring it down to your knees with a full sweep 
of the arm; if you meet Herr Schmidt, who is your 
social equal, you tip your hat as much as he does his 

and no more; whereas, if you meet your tailor 

you respond to his low bow by the merest touch of 
recognition. To the initiated every man proclaims 
his social position at every step, by his bowing. One 
must remove his hat when he enters a store, though, 
strangely enough, the same man who stands uncov- 
ered while he is purchasing a pair of gloves will wear 
his hat in the cafe next door. The Englishman, whose 
neck is proverbially stiff in the matter of bowing, al- 
ways leaves behind him the smoke of offense when he 
leaves a German shop, for he has invariably forgotten 
to remove his hat. The German store-keeper is the 
soul of poHteness. He rushes out to open the door 
for you when you leave, and whether you have bought 
anything or not, he has an appreciative " thank you " 
ready for you. Indeed, the spirit of thanks is one 
of the pleasant things that the stranger encounters 
in Germany. The elevator boy who takes you up to 



/ 



I 8 Seen in Germany 

your room thanks you heartily when you become 
his guest, the waiter thanks you when he takes your 
order, the barber thanks you when you sit down in 
his chair. And I am sure that this is not done merely 
with a view to ultimate tips, for many Germans tip 
very sparingly ; it seems to me that it proceeds rather 
from a very genuine friendliness which I have seen 
manifested in so many other pleasant ways in Ger- 
many. At least, I like to think so. 

Speaking of the shops of Germany, nothing could 
be finer than the window-displays of the book, art, 
and flower stores ; they are fine, even after Paris, 
especially in Munich and Dresden, and they are 
brilhant compared with the ugly displays in London. 
One walking up a city street in Berlin for the first 
time is irresistibly attracted by the splendid window- 
shows, not only of books and works of art, but of all 
sorts of other things, and by and by he is so far 
tempted that he enters the shop. And what a dis- 
appointment! From the appearance of the window, 
he has anticipated greater glories within ; but here is 
a stuffy, dim little shop, ill-arranged, over-crowded, 
and often dusty. And like as not he finds that a 
greater part of the merchant's stock is in the window, 
a part of that magnificent display, and that when he 
asks to see a piece of goods, the clerk must go crawl- 
ing into the window after it. Of course there are 
fine shops in Germany, but they are not plentiful. 



'mm,, 




Co 






/ 

20 Seen in Germany 



One day in a German book-store I picked up a 
book of rules for drinking beer ; it was a good thick 
book, and it must have required not a little study to 
master it. Afterwards I found how thoroughly 
some of these rules were observed. There are reg- 
ular formulae of words to be followed, all set down 
in clear type, so that even a wayfarer, though a fool, 
may properly express his sentiments to his beer-drink- 
ingcompanions. When you wish to drink with a friend 
you say. " prosit," and you look him in the eye. If 
he feels thirsty, he says, " I come immediately ; " if 
he wishes to delay the response, he says, " I come 
soon," but he must not forget you ; when next he 
drinks, you are the friend with whom he " comes." 
And sometimes the German rises to propose the 
company, and he says, " I drink my bloom," where- 
upon the entire company drinks the bloom ; or if he 
be exceedingly thirsty, he says, " I drink my bloom, 
and that which hangs thereto " — and he empties his 
glass. There may be small men in the party to 
whom " that which hangs thereto " may be more than 
sufficient, but if they wish to be strictly polite they 
must not leave a drop. These are only a few among 
hundreds of rules, observed most rigidly among the 
students and in the drinking clubs. 

One evening I walked out to a little tavern among 
the Thuringian hills, one of those quiet places at the 
end of a beautiful stroll which the German loves. It 



Common Things 2i 

was a curious old place, smoky-raftered and hung 
with prints half a century old. The long tables 
were filled with men and women and a sprinkling 
of children, and the beer flowed free. Along in 
the evening a white-bearded old man came around 
and distributed a leaflet on which was printed a 
German song. After every one was supplied, the old 
man struck a gong, and at once the whole party 
began to sing with right good-will, — joyously and 
unaffectedly. There were, as I knew, solid German 
citizens and business men in the company, as well 
as students and workmen with their wives ; for a 
German beer resort is nothing if not democratic. 
All these sang together and enjoyed it well, stopping 
at places indicated in the song by the words, " beer- 
pause," and after a long look into the tall wooden 
mugs, they sang again. It was really delightful 
enough in its entire simplicity and complete socia- 
bility, but the sentiment of the songs — and there 
were many of them — was amusing enough to a 
stranger. They were not singing love ditties or 
national hymns, nor yet music-hall ballads. Each 
song was the work of a local poet, and it expressed 
in highflown language the glories of this particular 
beer-place, — how good the beer was, how jolly and 
benevolent and honest the host was, what a splendid 
view there was from the windows, how sweet the bar- 
maid looked, and such sausages as she served ! And 



2 2 Seen in Germany 

business men and all, they sang the glories of the 
place for an hour or more, and then they walked 
home in the cool of the evening, sober but sociable. 
One could not help thinking how shy an American 
or an English gathering would have been in express- 
ing such warm sentiments for a host ; they would 
have felt that they were being used for advertising 
purposes ; and there is nothing that sooner stings 
the dignity of your American. 

The German has not reached the point of revolt 
against advertising. Like everything else, advertising 
is limited by law ; the cities provide certain large 
wooden columns at street intersections upon which 
placards may be pasted, and the streets are not dis- 
figured by dead-walls bearing patent-medicine adver- 
tisements. One coming into New York or any other 
American city must perforce be impressed with the 
virtues of somebody's soap or pain-killer painted in 
letters that seem to fill the landscape, and in London 
the trams and 'buses are one mass of traveling adver- 
tisements. This disfigurement is unknown in Ger- 
many, and yet the Germans have their own effective 
methods of proclaiming the excellence of their wares. 
Look at the gimcrack toy which your boy is playing 
with, and you will find upon it the words, " Made in 
Germany," and if you travel in Germany you will 
find that you are very persistently plied with circulars 
and pamphlets by post and otherwise. Last summer 







53 






<5 



24 Seen in Germany 



Barnum's circus visited Germany for the first time, 
and brought with it American methods of advertis- 
ing. I am not exaggerating when I say that Barnum 
paralyzed the Germans, — both paralyzed and scan- 
dalized them. They did n't think it possible for any 
business enterprise to make so much noise ; it was 
positively undignified. For Barnum bought up store- 
windows and store-fronts by the hundreds, and his 
enormous colored prints, such as had never before 
been seen in Germany, told the wonders of the show 
to gaping multitudes. They disapproved of all this, 
but they went to the show. I heard complaints 
afterwards that the circus was too big ; they felt that 
they were losing money when there were perform- 
ances in three rings, and they could see only one 
at a time. 

The Germans, as a rule, disapprove of all for- 
eigners, especially the English and French, and dur- 
ing our Spanish war they hated us most ardently. I 
don't know that the Germans are peculiar in this 
respect; every country thinks best of its own. But 
the individual German ordinarily treats a stranger 
with the greatest kindness and hospitality. I have 
had a hundred examples of this. Curiously enough, 
the ordinary German — I do not refer to the edu- 
cated classes — cannot tell foreigners apart, not even 
a Frenchman from an Englishman, except, of course, 
those Germans who live on the French border. 



Common Things 25 

The reason for this is simple. Unlike New York, 
for instance, where all the races of the earth dwell 
together in unity, Berlin, and most other German 
cities, are most uncosmopolitan. The proportion of 
foreign residents is exceedingly small, so that the 
Germans have had little experience in distinguishing 
nationalities. Recently, however, Italians have ap- 
peared in Germany, to do such hard manual labor 
as they do in New York. 

The German experiences especial difficulty in dis- 
tinguishing Americans from Englishmen. Several 
times during the Boer war, when the anti-British 
feeling was strongest, street boys called after us, 
" English, English, poison-throwers," — no doubt re- 
ferring to the throwing of lyddite shells by the 
British forces in South Africa. 

But I heard of one German who knew an Ameri- 
can every time he saw him. He was a professor of 
ethnology, — a gentle, absent-minded old man who 
wore thick prism glasses that made his eyes stare out 
blue and big, giving him a look of perpetual aston- 
ishment. He had made a study of the craniums of 
his American students, and it was amusing enough to 
find that he looked upon Americans as a class, as 
incipient red Indians. He had formed the curious 
theory that all Americans, owing to the nature of 
their climate, and other conditions of environment, 
were gradually acquiring the characteristics of the 



26 Seen in Germany 



Indian aborigines, — high cheek-bones, straight, 
coarse hair, and a bronze-colored complexion. I 
learned that he sometimes stopped Americans on 
the streets and requested the privilege of examining 
their cheek-bones, always with a look of humorous 
astonishment. 1 suppose that in time we shall have 
a voluminous and learned monograph on the sub- 
ject, done as only a German professor can do it. 

The ordinary German has a rather hazy idea of 
America and Americans, although it is perhaps as 
clear as the ordinary English idea. He knows 
Milwaukee, for he has a cousin there ; he knows 
Hoboken, for that is where the German ships land ; 
and he has heard of Niagara Falls and Chicago. 
The only Americans 1 ever heard mentioned, not 
of course among the educated people, who are toler- 
ably familiar with things American, were Carl Schurz, 
Dewey, and McKinley. The Spanish-American war 
did more than anything else has ever done to educate 
Europe on American affairs. Previous to 1898, they 
heard of our lynchings, train-robberies, political dis- 
honesty, and international marriages, which confirmed 
them in the view that we were vulgar, energetic, and 
rich ; but now the papers contain a good deal of 
American news. All Americans, it may be said in 
passing, are still regarded as rich. 

An English-speaking stranger in Germany is as- 
tonished by the wide knowledge of his language, and 



Common Things 27 

not only among hotel porters, waiters, and others who 
have special need to cater to the tourist element, but 
among business men who seldom meet tourists, shop- 
keepers, barbers, and, of course, professors, military 
officers, and so on. An ordinary tourist who wishes 
merely to see the country, has little need of knowl- 
edge of the German language. English is the great- 
est of commercial languages, with a world-wide use, 
and it is quite necessary to business enterprise, es- 
pecially in foreign countries, for the German to be 
able to speak English fluently. As a result, thou- 
sands of young Germans go to Great Britain every 
year and serve an apprenticeship in English business- 
houses, barber-shops, restaurants, hotels, and the 
like, gaining a knowledge of the language and of the 
weights and measures, and at the same time studying 
business methods generally. Indeed, England has 
unintentionally given much of the instruction that 
has enabled the German to win some of his greatest 
business triumphs of recent years, so that the pupil 
now threatens the commercial supremacy of the 
master. During this preliminary service in England, 
the German is willing to work for little or nothing, 
considering his occupation in the light of an educa- 
tional course. Thus London is brimful of Germans, 
— barber-shops with only an English-speaking pro- 
prietor, restaurants that swarm with German waiters, 
and shops that employ German workmen. Of late 



28 Seen in Germany 



years many German boys go to Ireland to learn 
the language, and acquire at the same time the 
Irish middle-class opinion of E.ngland, which they 
cherish and propagate on their return to their native 
land. Perhaps that is one of the sources of Ger- 
man dislike for the Englishman. Another thing that 
the German boy acquires in Ireland is a rich and 
varied brogue, and one of the most amusing things 
one hears in Germany is the waiter who speaks 
German-Irish-English. A music-hall comedian who 
could adequately imitate this combination as I have 
frequently heard it, would certainly make his for- 
tune. Next to this in ludicrousness is the Cock- 
ney English of many porters and waiters, learned, 
I have no doubt, within the sound of Bow Bells. 
Much of the language acquirements of the waiter- 
class is, however, barely skin deep. Talk about 
food, forks, and fees, and the waiter understands in- 
stantly ; but ask him a question outside of the realm 
of the dining-room, and he is lost, and so are you. 
Some Germans of the better class come to America 
to learn the language ; but this, as I understand, is 
looked upon with disfavor, for many of those who 
come never return, finding undreamed-of business 
chances here, to say nothing of plenty of German 
society. I met a young German, the son of a 
general in the imperial army, who was, moreover, 
a " von." He had been in New York for nearly 



Common Things 



29 



two years, he spoke English fluently, and he was 
returning to do his final service of four weeks in the 
army. A military career in Germany was open to 




A German Douhle-Deck Tram-Car 

him, and it had been his intention in America merely 
to learn the language; but he liked American life so 
well that he had decided to return and make his 
home in New York. 

A hundred and one small things point significantly 



30 Seen in Germany 

to the recent remarkable developments in Germany, 
and they are quite as convincing as the difficult gov- 
ernment statistics of industrial progress, exports, and 
growth of population. In no fewer than three hotels 
at which I stopped, I was lighted to bed with an 
old-fashioned candle in a quaint brass candlestick, 
and in each case the porter apologized, and ex- 
plained that they were just then fitting the building 
with electricity, and that in another month or more 
every room would have its own incandescent larnps. 
We in America have been content to take our pro- 
gress more slowly. From the candle-stage we rose to 
the kerosene-oil lamp, and from that we drifted to 
the gaslight-stage, and that in turn was superseded 
by electricity. But the German has made a swift 
leap from dim candlehood to the blaze of electric- 
light-hood, — and not only in hotels, but in private 
houses and business buildings. In the same way, the 
transit system of many German cities has been sud- 
denly transformed from crude lumbering 'buses 
drawn by horses, to the most approved electric cars 
and automobiles, skipping entirely the intermediary 
stages of horse cars, cable cars, and often passing 
even the trolley stage, and springing at once to the 
underground wire or storage system. When the 
German made up his mind to advance, he advanced 
all the way ; he took no half measures. An Amer- 
ican engineer who was visiting Germany after an 



Common Things 31 



absence of three years, told me that the great cities, 
especially Hamburg, Berlin, Nuremberg, and a few 
others, actually seemed made over in the short time 
since his last visit. 

" Lightning has literally struck Germany," he 
said, and he pointed out how the cities blazed with 
electricity, — streets, show-windows, hotels, restau- 
rants, and private dwellings. Berlin is brilliant com- 
pared with London. Indeed, no country in the 
world, not even the United States, is advancing more 
rapidly in electrical development than Germany. 

Then there is the matter of the development of 
the mechanical sense among the people at large. I 
sometimes think that we Americans are becoming a 
race of mechanics ; we are surrounded by machines 
of more or less intricate mechanism, and we learn to 
operate them, take them apart and repair them. 
The principles of machinery are coming to us 
with our grammar and geography. We have bicy- 
cles, sewing-machines, phonographs ; we play on 
pianos by machinery ; our farmers are literally sur- 
rounded by machines ; we talk by telephone and use 
call bells ; we speak of currents and cut-offs, dynamos 
and batteries, with easy familiarity ; we ride in ma- 
chines and we write with machines. And Germany 
seems to be following in the same direction. Nearly 
every town of any consequence in Germany has one 
or more agencies for American sewing-machines and 



2 Seen in Germany 



for the American kodak. Bicycles and tricycles are 
everywhere, and motor-carriages can be seen in the 
streets of most of the cities. All large new buildings 
are being fitted with elevators and call-bell systems, 
though in most cases the elevators are very tame 
affairs in the matter of speed. Indeed, so new is the 
elevator that there exists a humorous confusion of 
names. In some places it goes by the English name 
" lift ; " in some, by the American name " elevator ; " 
in others, by the French term ; while the patriotic 
Germans call it in some instances, *' fahrstuhl," and 
in others, " aufzug." The slot machine has also had 
a remarkable development in Germany. At many 
railway stations, if one wishes to go out on the plat- 
form to meet a friend, he must perforce drop a ten- 
pfennig piece (two and a half cents) in a slot machine 
and draw a ticket. He may buy unlimited postal 
cards, candy, and gimcracks at slot-machines ; he 
may drop the equivalent of a penny in the slot and 
hear phonographic music, or see moving pictures. 
But the most notable development of all is the 
automatic restaurant. There are several of these 
curious institutions in Berlin, two very fine ones in 
Friedrich Strasse, and they are also to be found in 
other German cities. They are large, brilliantly 
fitted rooms, with metal and glass walls which con- 
tain a great number of pockets and slots. Supposing 
you wish a glass of beer and a sandwich, you drop 



Common Things 33 

your twenty-pfennig piece in the proper beer-place, 
and having set a glass underneath a spout, you turn 
a handle and immediately your glass is foaming full. 
Then you cross the room to the sandwich depart- 
ment, where, through a glass wall, you may see all 
the varieties of sandwiches in stock. When you 
have selected the kind you wish, a coin in the slot 
will cause it to drop out on a little shelf, and thence 
to a plate or into your hand. Should you desire 
coffee, milk, salad, cold meat, preserves, and in some 
cases warm dishes, they are all to be had for the 
dropping of a coin, and the food furnished is well 
cooked and fresh. Tables are provided at which one 
may stand or sit and eat his lunch. One would 
think that such institutions would in nowise attract 
the leisurely German, who loves to sit long over his 
beer and sausages; but they are quite as popular as 
our own quick-lunch restaurants, being especially 
crowded in the evenings. 

There are many other evidences that the German 
is deep in the dust and grime of the machinery 
age. In more than one great manufacturing estab- 
lishment hundreds of labor-saving machines of Amer- 
ican make are to-day in operation, whole plants, 
indeed, being fitted with them throughout. 

I had the pleasure while in Berlin of visiting the 
factory where the Mauser rifle, the best known of 
military small arms, is made. It is a huge plant. 



34 Seen in Germany 



fitted with hundreds of lathes, boring machines, 
screw-making machines, and so on, and what was 
my astonishment to see on nearly all of the machines 
the name of a well-known Connecticut manufacturer. 
These Connecticut machines made the rifles with 
which the Spaniards shot our soldiers at San Juan 
and El Caney. Indeed a great manufacturing estab- 
lishment in Berlin is engaged solely in the manufac- 
ture of machinery of various sorts from American 
models. In science we have learned much from the 
Germans ; in machinery the Germans are learning 
much from us. And this introduction of labor- 
saving devices is going on all over the empire to a 
degree that can hardly be realized by a foreigner ; 
it is one of the causes of the greatly increased output 
of German factories. 



II 



THE KAISER 



II 

THE KAISER 

His Personality and his Passions 

THE American visitor who sees William II. 
of Germany for the first time is curi- 
ously impressed with the influence of the 
comic paper. He discovers that his im- 
agination in picturing the Kaiser has followed the 
exaggerations of the caricaturist rather than the sober 
reality of the photograph. For the German Kaiser 
is not at all what his caricaturists, at least his foreign 
caricaturists, make him. In the first place, he is 
not a large man, neither tall, nor inordinately broad 
of shoulders. Somehow it is the natural bent of 
the human mind to associate majesty with physical 
bigness. I believe the old Egyptians represented 
their Ptolemys and Rameses as giants. And 
William, who knows the psychology of royalty to 
the seventh shading, has built high on this feeling. 
Any one of the seventy-eight court photographers, 
more or less, in Berlin, will tell you how carefully 
William always arranges the groupings when he is 



38 Seen in Germany 

to have his picture taken in company with others ; 
and a study of the resulting photographs will show 
how, almost invariably, William looms tall above 
the shorter men who surround him. A favorite 
picture represents the Kaiser standing side by 
side with the famous artist, Menzel, whose four 
feet, something, of stature gives William the frame 
of a Goth. In one of the galleries there is a por- 
trait of the Kaiser in full naval uniform, standing 
on the bridge of one of his ships of war. The 
canvas, which is so hung as to strike the visitor 
as he enters the doorway, is of enormous size and 
the figure of the emperor stands out of it with 
gigantic impressiveness. Even in many of his 
smaller pictures, the cabinet photographs, the camera 
has been moved so close that the Kaiser's face 
nearly fills the plate, thereby giving an extraordinary 
impression of hugeness. The caricaturists have 
naturally exaggerated the suggestions given by these 
various portraits, and it is with something of a 
shock that one realizes, for the first time, that the 
Kaiser is, after all, only a man of common stature, 
or less. 

In other ways, also, a first view of the Kaiser 
impresses one. A photograph gives no hint of 
color. The Kaiser is a brown-faced man, the brown 
of wind and weather, of fierce riding on land and of 
a glaring sun on the sea. His face is thinner than 




The German Kaiser 



40 Seen in Germany 



one has pictured and there is a hint of weariness 
about the eyes. His hair gives the impression of 
being thin, and his famous moustache is not so long 
nor so jauntily fierce as one has imagined. There is 
many a dry-goods clerk in Berlin who has out- 
Kaisered the Kaiser in growing a moustache. 

But, owing to the sin of retouching, there is one 
thing that few of William's photographs show to 
advantage, and it is the most impressive character- 
istic of his face. And that is its singular sternness 
in repose. Square, iron jaws, thin, firm lips, a 
certain sharpness and leanness of visage, a penetra- 
ting eye, all speak of invincible determination, pride, 
dignity. Indeed, herein lies the force of personal 
majesty, for William, however much one may smile 
at his passion for royal display, has many of those 
splendid attributes of character which would make a 
man great in any sphere of life. It would be a large 
company of Germans, indeed, among whom one 
would fail to select him instinctively as the leader. 
A first impression, therefore, may thus be summed 
up : The Kaiser is less a great king than one has 
imagined, and more a great man. The longer one 
remains in Germany, and the more he learns of 
William and his extraordinary activities, the deeper 
grows this impression. We Americans have never 
quite overcome our first prejudices against the Kaiser, 
bred during the early days of his reign, when the 



The Kaiser 41 

mantle of royalty — and the Hohenzollern mantle 
at that — was new to his shoulders, and he said 
and did strange things ; but in Europe, where they 
have grown accustomed to his vagaries, now, indeed, 
much less pronounced in their manifestations, and 
have set them down as the expressions of a strong 
and original individuality, the Kaiser occupies a 
place of high and genuine esteem. An American 
who remains long in Germany feels this change in 
sentiment strongly and when the Kaiser passes he 
raises his hat with all the others, not merely be- 
cause this is royalty, but because it is character 
and strength of purpose. 

As might be expected, the Kaiser is most popular 
in his capital. One hearing a commotion on Unter 
den Linden, with a flash of white plumes in the dis- 
tance, and the swift clatter of hoofs, may well crowd 
up to see. A pair of splendid horses, traveling like 
the wind, two richly uniformed men on the box, and 
the Kaiser, the Kaiserin, and another lady in the 
open carriage behind. You observe that the Kaiser 
sits with his back to the horses, giving the place of 
honor to his wife, for William has set the highest 
ideals in courtesy to women — the Anglo-Saxon 
ideals, which often form a strong contrast to the 
rougher Teutonic customs. He wears a glistening 
silver helmet, which he touches with military precision 
as the people on the streets shout and lift their hats. 



42 Seen in Germany 

No cavalcade of guards accompanies the carriage, and 
there is apparently no effort to guard the lives of its 
occupants, except in so far as they are protected by the 
terrific speed at which the horses are always driven. 
It is one of William's pleasures to show himself and 
his family frequently to his people and the royal 
carriage may be seen at all hours in the streets of 
Berlin. The Kaiser's departure from the palace is 
always signalled by the fall of a flag, which serves as 
a notification to the people to prepare for his ap- 
pearance among them. Nearly every afternoon he 
rides out, usually in uniform, with some of his staff 
of^cers, galloping down the Linden and into the 
Thiergarten, where he often spends an hour in 
exercise. 

The Kaiser appears to better advantage on horse- 
back than when standing, being tall of body. He 
has a great variety of uniforms and one may see him 
many times and never see him clothed twice alike. 
This diversity of dress is one manifestation of his 
well-known love of display and pageantry. He 
loves the outward manifestation of royalty, the sym- 
bols of power, and he uses them without stint. Not 
long ago an American professor attended a reception 
in the royal palace given by the Kaiser to an associa- 
tion of scientists, at which William appeared in the 
gorgeous robes of royalty preceded by liveried cham- 
berlains bearing the crown and insignia. It was a 



The Kaiser 43 

most impressive display, and when the professor came 
away he said to a friend : 

" I am a republican to the backbone, but I believe 
that if monarchs are necessary they should be monarchs 
to the last bit of gold lace, just as William is Kaiser." 

The next day this friend had an audience with the 
Kaiser, and in the course of the conversation told 
him what the American professor had said. The 
Kaiser laughed heartily. 

" That is exactly what I believe," he said. "Dom 
Pedro of Brazil illustrated the folly of trying to be a 
republican on a throne." 

The pictures of the Kaiser and his family form an 
admirable indication of the degree of his popularity 
in various parts of the empire. It is said that the 
different photographs of the Kaiser now number far 
into the thousands. At a single shop which I visited 
in Berlin, there were no fewer than two hundred and 
sixty-seven different pictures of the Kaiser and this 
did not include the scores upon scores of groups 
and family pictures in which the Kaiser appears. It 
is said that the Kaiser averages a picture a day, year 
in and year out. Of course weeks will pass when no 
photograph is taken, at least no official photograph, 
and then there comes a time when a dozen of them 
are made in an afternoon. In Berlin, one cannot 
possibly escape the Kaiser's face : it is everywhere, in 
the hotel room where you sleep, in the restaurant 




i 



The Kaiser and Kaiserin 



The Kaiser 45 

where you eat, in almost every shop window, in the 
picture galleries, in the churches, in the public build- 
ings, and in every illustrated paper. No American 
presidential candidate ever had his likeness so widely 
displayed even at his home town in campaign time. 
And not only photographs, but paintings, busts in 
marble, bronze, and bisque, cheap colored prints, 
medals, bas-reliefs, and every other known form of 
representation of the human face. 

This is in Berlin, the centre of Prussian loyalty. 
In the northern provinces of Germany, especially in 
Pomerania, the pictures of the Kaiser are not so 
plentiful, and yet they are very numerous. One may 
see thousands of them in Stettin, where there are tens 
in Dresden. Indeed, as one goes south from Berlin 
the Kaiser's pictures grow fewer in number, until at 
Munich one rarely sees any of them displayed, — 
certainly the best evidence of the aloofness of the 
Bavarians. Judged by the number of his pictures on 
view, the Kaiser is more popular to-day in Cologne 
and Aix-la-Chapelle, in the half-French Rhine coun- 
try, than he is in Bavaria. Indeed, one who hears 
everything in the Kaiser's praise in north Germany 
will get a glimpse of the reverse opinion in south 
Germany. In many places, like such crowded manu- 
facturing cities as Chemnitz, one hears much said 
against the Kaiser, although it is not so much against 
William as it is against the form of government which 



46 Seen in Germany 

he represents. And if William fears anything in the 
world it is the spirit of socialism which grows rank in 
these factory towns : in more than one of his speeches 
he has mentioned socialism as one of the things which 
Germans must conquer with a strong hand. 

The greatest criticism of the Kaiser made by his 
people is that he talks too much. One hears that 
everywhere. I think the Germans rather admire 
William for thinking as he does but they blame 
him for saying aloud all he thinks. That is charac- 
teristic of the German ; he is born a free thinker, but 
his institutions and the watchful eye of the omniscient 
police forever keep the lid shut down upon his genu- 
ine sentiments ; he is slow of anger and unrivaled in 
his reverence for authority. It so happens, therefore, 
that while the Kaiser may often be expressing the real 
sentiment of his people he is expressing it too loudly 
to suit the cautious German type of diplomacy. An- 
other criticism, which is not now heard as frequently, 
perhaps, as it was a few years ago, condemns what the 
Germans imagine to be a pro-English attitude on the 
part of the Kaiser. They cannot forget that their sov- 
ereign is by birth half an Englishman ; and many there 
are who look with only half-concealed suspicion on 
the cordial relations that existed for so many years 
between the Kaiser and his grandmother, the late 
Queen, and suspect his present friendship with his 
uncle, King Edward VII. It was once said that the 




T:he German Cro^n Prince 



48 Seen in Germany 

Kaiser was more sensitive to this criticism than to al- 
most any other, and the story of his famous reply when 
injured at a regatta some years ago is still told in Ger- 
many. As he saw the blood flowing he said grimly : 
"Well, there goes the last drop of my English blood." 

In the light of this sentiment one wonders how the 
average German regards the recent display of friend- 
liness between the Kaiser and the King, during the 
funeral ceremonies of the Queen, as well as the ap- 
parent agreement regarding the Chinese question. 

The Kaiser is an excellent English student, speak- 
ing and reading the language perfectly and following 
English models in many of his most important de- 
partures. One does not forget that the Kaiser as a 
boy was especially fond of Captain Marryat's tales of 
the sea, and that in more recent years he was one of 
the most enthusiastic admirers of our own Captain 
Mahan's great book, " The Influence of Sea Power," 
— a book which he has used as one of his strongest 
arguments for a more powerful German navy. 

The Kaiser is much too great a man and the claims 
of his country are too insistent, to permit him to 
specialize in any great degree in his interests, and yet 
he is but a man and certain lines of activity engross 
his attention more than others. Upon his accession 
to the throne his enthusiasms were chiefly military; 
he loved his army and he longed passionately to use 
it. This interest still continues to a degree, and yet 



The Kaiser 



49 



it may be said that at present the Kaiser's greatest 
hobby is his new navy. He has enough English 
blood in him to make him passionately fond of the 
sea and of sea life, and his leanings toward all that is 
martial make him the natural sponsor of a great navy. 
And it has required all the determination, tact, and 
enthusiasm of William the man, as well as all the 
immense power of William the Kaiser, to convince 
the Germans that a great navy is a necessity to the 
nation and then to persuade them to pay for it. If 
William were an American he would be classed in 
politics as a republican with strong sentiments of im- 
perialism and expansion, a supporter of the doctrine 
of high protective tariffs and sound money, and a 
steady champion of a larger army and navy. His en- 
emies might even accuse him of a fondness for trusts. 
He has been compared in character and aims to 
Theodore Roosevelt, and the similarity of the two men 
in restless energy, honesty, wide general culture, and 
information and admiration of things martial, is cer- 
tainly most striking. Years ago the Kaiser began 
studying the naval question in every one of its phases, 
and thus he continued until he was intimately familiar 
with the navies of the world as well as with the naval 
attitude of each nation. Indeed, he is said to know 
by name the chief war vessels of every country with 
the tonnage, armament, and equipment of each. 
With this knowledge in hand he began a mighty 

4 



The Kaiser ^i 

campaign of education among his people. He invited 
members of the Reichstag repeatedly to the palace, 
showed them lantern pictures of the great vessels of 
the world, and gave them lectures on naval affairs, and 
the moral that he invariably preached was : " Germany 
must have a great navy." He argued from the point 
of view of commerce, of industry, of expansion, of 
sentiment and patriotism, and he finally succeeded in 
getting nearly all he wanted, only to find that he wanted 
more ; and so the work is still going forward. 

War anywhere in the world mounts like strong 
wine to William's head. He hears afar the sounds 
of strife, and he longs to be there to see. And some- 
times he grows so excited that, like a small boy at a 
fire, he can't help shouting, and then the world won- 
ders over his curious cablegrams of sympathy or en- 
couragement. There was no more fascinated observer 
of our war with Spain than William of Germany ; he 
watched every phase, he studied every maneuver, and 
later he used this information well in persuading his 
obdurate legislators that Germany must at least have 
a navy equal to that of the United States. 

More recently he has been interested in submarine 
boats, and when the English pounded the old 
" Belle Isle" to pieces he was one of the most eager 
of inquirers as to the exact effect of the shells on the 
sides of the old hulk and in her hold. Indeed, as 
soon as the bare report of the tests had been tele- 



52 Seen in Germany 

graphed to Berlin, William was discussing them 
eagerly with the foreign military attaches. He is, by 
the way, a great favorite with the foreign attaches. 
He treats them with bluff bonhomie, entertains them 
frequently, pumps them dry, and sends them away in 
all their lean emptiness, feeling that William is the 
greatest man on earth. At his palace at Potsdam, he 
has many conspicuous naval ornaments, among them 
models of battle ships, Krupp guns, and so on. He 
has painted a picture of merit, " Fight between Battle 
Ships," and it has seemed sometimes as if he lived and 
moved and had his being in ships. And not only 
ships of war enlist his enthusiasm, and ships of 
pleasure, for he is a great yachtsman, but there is no 
stronger supporter of the new and wonderfully pro- 
gressive merchant navy of Germany than the Kaiser. 
He knows to the last sheer-legs the equipment of 
every German ship yard. In the winter of 1900 he 
was present at the launching of the splendid new fast 
liner the " Deutschland," at Stettin, and when she ran 
on a bar he hurried to send war ships to drag her off. 
We find the emperor visiting the Berlin decorator 
who was making the interior furnishings of the new 
vessel, and giving his suggestions for changes. 
He telegraphs his sympathy to the North German 
Lloyd Company when its New York docks are 
burned, he encourages subsidies for German ships, 
and he plans for their instant conversion in case of 



The Kaiser 53 

war to powerful cruisers — for in the end everything 
stands upon its serviceability to Germany in arms. 
No detail escapes him or tails to interest him. I 
shall not soon forget a little anecdote told me by 
Captain Albers. When the great liner the *' Fiirst 
Bismarck " was finished, the Kaiser came on board 
with Prince Henry to inspect her. He approved 
everything until he saw the tables in the dining room. 
Then he said to Captain Albers : " I should think a 
man who had been at sea as long as you would 
not allow a cabinet maker to give you square-cornered 
tables on shipboard." After the Kaiser left, the 
table corners were quickly rounded off. Two years 
later the Kaiser again came aboard the vessel ; and 
when he saw the tables he said : " I see you have 
rounded off the corners. That is good." He had 
not forgotten even a thing as small as this. 

The German navy and the advance of German 
shipping are without doubt the Kaiser's strongest 
interests at present. Connected with this hobby, and 
growing out of it, is his deep enthusiasm for what is 
now the most striking feature of German develop- 
ment — commercial and industrial expansion. No 
monarch in Europe takes such a keen interest in the 
industrial affairs and in the extension of the export 
business of his domain as William. This interest 
has arisen largely from the Kaiser's notable talent for 
taking a broad view of affairs, a talent developed by 



j;4 Seen in Germany 

travel in other countries and by persistently endeav- 
oring to look upon Germany through foreign eyes. 
He and other great Germans have not been slow to 
see that the future prosperity of the country, with 
its ever growing population and its ever insufficient 
agricultural production, must needs depend largely 
on its success as manufacturer and trader. Hence 
the Kaiser has taken the greatest interest in spread- 
ing industrial and technical education. Not long 
ago he shocked the conservative educational elements 
of the German universities by paying special respect 
and attention to the technical schools. For years 
without number all academic honors and degrees 
have fallen to the men who have come from the 
universities. Now degrees are given to certain tech- 
nical school graduates, and they are placed on the same 
level in many respects with the aristocrats of the uni- 
versities. The Kaiser himself attended the recent cele- 
bration of this departure at the famous technical High 
School at Charlottenburg. Those who know how 
conservative Germany is in educational affairs appre- 
ciate the almost revolutionary effect of this departure. 
Besides encouraging more skilled workmen, the 
Kaiser is not less interested in finding places where 
the goods which they manufacture may find profit- 
able sale. Hence the strenuous efforts to encourage 
the building of merchant ships to carry German 
goods, and the all but feverish desire on the part of 



/ 



The Kaiser 



55 



the Kaiser for foreign possessions and foreign spheres 
of influence. The Kaiser is a shrewd and far- 
sighted man, and he sees clearly that the great coming 
struggle among the nations is a struggle for com- 
merce. Virgin continents and islands have now all 
been occupied; the United States has at last supplied 
her own vast necessities, and is preparing to enter the 
foreign market with huge surpluses of manufactured 
goods ; and that nation will prosper most which 
secures and holds the best markets. Hence the 
scramble for China ; hence the Kaiser's eagerness for 
more territory, no matter where located. 

One of the most significant and impressive recent 
movements in Germany is the colonial exhibition. 
Nearly every town of any prominence has had one 
of these exhibitions or is about to have one. They 
are given under the auspices of the best families of 
the place with the ladies of society in charge of the 
booths. I attended one of the exhibitions at Jena. 
It occupied a large hall and it consisted of sample 
products from German colonies, of maps showing 
the location of foreign German possessions, and of 
innumerable photographs of scenery, colonial life, 
and so on. Special attention was given to the men 
who were governing the colonies, large portraits of 
each occupying a prominent place in the exhibit. 
Circulars describing the colonies, inviting immigra- 
tion, and giving all manner of statistical information 



56 Seen in Germany 

were distributed free. As a side department there 
was a naval and shipping exhibit which made the 
usual strong plea for more ships, giving in colored 
diagrams all manner of statistical information as to 
German exports and imports, and as to German 
ships, with comparisons with the activities of other 
countries. It is probable that no other country ever 
made such a campaign of education in commerce 
and industrial expansion. And behind it all looms 
the irrepressibly active Kaiser with his vast schemes 
for the advancement of his country. He will have 
a great navy, and great shipping interests, and great 
colonial possessions, if he has to bring every peasant 
in the empire to his palace and convince him with 
lantern pictures and chalk talks. For the common 
citizen of Germany who pays the taxes must first be 
convinced — at least that is the theory ! 

These two things — his navy, and his desire for 
commercial expansion — must be set down as the 
Kaiser's greatest interests. William has been accused 
of having a universal interest, of being a sort of 
kingly dabbler in everything. An emperor must of 
necessity possess wide interests, and yet one who 
watches the Kaiser's activities will soon perceive that, 
after all, he is like other men ; he has his great pas- 
sions and his lesser ones. He cares little, for in- 
stance, for science or for horse-racing. He loves 
travel ; he entertains high respect for religion, a 



The Kaiser 57 

religion of his own stern Mosaic kind ; he dabbles 
in art and music ; he cares nothing for social affairs 
unless they have some specific purpose or unless 
they reach the stage of pageantry in which he is the 
central figure. But among all his lesser likings 
nothing occupies such a place as statuary. He is 
preeminently a monument-lover. Not long ago he 
said to a friend : " There are thirty-four sculptors 
in Berlin." He knew every one of them personally 
and he knew all about their work. Nothing pleases 
him better than to visit them and to be photo- 
graphed among the litter of the studio. Every one 
knows of his astonishing adornment of the great 
central drive through the Thiergarten with a mag- 
nificent row of statuary, each group representing one 
of his ancestors and two of that ancestor's foremost 
counsellors. This statuary is all in white marble, 
magnificently done, and erected at the Kaiser's per- 
sonal expense. Indeed, the Kaiser has watched and 
criticised each statue as it grew under the sculp- 
tor's hand, and has presided at the unveiling of each. 
It is characteristic, also, of the Kaiser that he has 
selected a place for a statue of himself which shall 
match those of his ancestors. 

This work has been done not only because the 
Kaiser is a lover of statuary, but because he loves 
his capital city and wishes to see it beautified, and, 
more than that, he believes that such representations 



58 



Seen in Germany 



of the great men of the nation have a profound 
educational influence on the people. They are 
visible symbols of what patriotic men can do. The 
Kaiser is ever a profound educator. I shall not 
soon forget my visit to one of these new statues on 
a Friday afternoon. From afar I saw a great crowd 
of children gathered around it, and as I approached 
I saw that it was a school class, and the master was 
standing there in front, telling the story of the king 
and his two counsellors, while the mute statues gave 
his words a reality that must have impressed them 
indelibly upon their minds. I learned that this 
method of teaching German history was pursued to 
a great extent in Berlin ; and whatever may be said 
of the Kaiser's vanity in thus setting up a row of his 
ancestors for worship, one cannot but feel that he had 
another and a profoundly useful purpose in the work. 




,-, -^JfTiL.lk. 




Ill 

THE GERMAN PRIVATE SOLDIER 



Ill 



THE GERMAN PRIVATE SOLDIER 

Who he is and How he is Made 

HREE words, the facets of the 
same idea, will express the national 
atmosphere of Germany : order, 
system, discipline. From the mo- 
ment one sets foot on the soil of 
the Fatherland, particularly if he 
enters by way of the French 
border, he feels this atmosphere. 
It radiates from the soldierly rail- 
road guard who stands sharply at 
attention " at the crossing as the 
train rushes past ; he feels it in 
the forests all planted properly 
in rows, and in the neatly kept 
railroad grounds and rights of 
way; he feels it in the policeman 
who demands his address, his 
nationality, his business, and how long he is going to 
stay, so that he may be properly tagged and pigeon- 
holed; and, above all, he feels it in the endless system 




62 Seen in Germany 

— and it is nothing short of a system — of military 
and civil uniforms, which helps to relieve him of the 
responsibility of being a judge of character, for almost 
every other German wears his character on his back. 
And this national atmosphere of Germany is, in 
reality, the atmosphere of the military camp, as the 
spirit of the government is the military spirit. In- 
deed, every German is a soldier. I do not mean, of 
course, that every German actually drills and studies 
the tactics of war every year; but until he is beyond 
the years of military service he is always on call, and 
he looks upon himself as a soldier of the empire. 
Indeed, after the German has finished his regular 
compulsory service, he is called back from time to 
time for a few weeks to keep him in training, to drill 
him in the new formations, or to give him a clear un- 
derstanding of new arms and ammunition. His life 
is divided into exact periods — the actual service 
period, the reserve period, the landwehr period, and 
the landsturm period ; and the military authorities 
always know just where to find him and at what call 
he must shoulder arms. As he grows older, there is 
less likelihood that the government will put its finger 
on him ; but in cases of great danger even the old 
landsturm must march forth. Every boy is born a 
soldier, his birth is registered with the authorities, and 
twenty years later, with automatic precision, he is 
called upon to do duty. As a consequence^ when 



The German Private Soldier 63 

one speaks of the making of a German soldier, he 
deals to a large extent, at least, with the greater sub- 
ject of the making of a German citizen, and indeed 
with the making of the German nation. 

Germany has no regular army in the sense in which 
that term is used in America and in England. There 
are no regular private soldiers who enlist for long 
periods of time and make soldiery a business. Ger- 
many is wholly without a counterpart of that pictur- 
esque character. Tommy Atkins, who has served 
everywhere in the world, and who knows no life 
outside of the army ; nor has she any type corre- 
sponding to our own hard-riding, dare-devil regulars. 
Although a country of soldiers, it is a curious fact 
that Germany has produced little or no soldier-boy 
literature — literature in which the English language 
is so rich. There is little glamour in soldier life to 
the German, no heroes adorn the service ; soldiery is 
simply one of the plain duties of life — if pleasant, to 
be enjoyed; if disagreeable, to be endured. And so, 
although Germany is a nation of soldiers, the soldier 
does not exist. Even the noncommissioned officers, 
although they serve for longer terms than the privates, 
and learn more of the business of soldiery, do it not 
so much for the love of the service or because it 
has irresistible attraction for them, as in the case of 
the English or the American " noncom," but with 
the definite purpose of making it a step to better 



64 Seen in Germany 

things in civil life. For after all is said, the German 
has no Irish blood in him ; he is not a natural-born 
fighter. And yet he does his duty in his German 
way with absolute faithfulness, serves his time and is 
proud of it afterward. But because he does not be- 
come intoxicated with the military life like the French- 
man, there is no reason why he should not be a good 
fighter. 

It is curious that a nation thus deficient in mili- 
tary enthusiasm should become, by common consent, 
the greatest of military powers, with the most per- 
fectly organized fighting system and the most per- 
fectly trained individual soldier. 

The German army, like the German nation, has 
been squeezed into existence. Germany, open on 
every side to attack, has been the great battle- 
ground of Europe through all the centuries ; and by 
constant pressure within and without, the army has 
had its growth. It was the result of stern necessity 
for defense. It was defense or death ; and that, in 
spite of the commonly reported military aspirations 
of the German Kaiser^ is the keynote of the system. 
The army must be made powerful enough to defend 
the country from the attacks of any one power or all 
of them together. If it is necessary to march into 
France in the course of such a war, well and good ; 
but that is not the fundamental purpose of the army. 

And this idea of defending the Fatherland is, sig- 



The German Private Soldier 65 

niiicantly enough, the idea which animates every citi- 
zen German. In France, the popular attitude is just 
the reverse. There an army is for attack, it is a 
weapon for offense, and whenever the army becomes 
about so strong, or when an ambitious officer arises, 
immediately there is talk of war with England or 
Germany or some other nation. There have been 
signs recently that the attitude of Germany, in high 
official circles at least, was changing, that a new spirit 
of conquest and extension had been born (witness the 
Chinese expedition) ; but if that is so, it has not yet 
affected the German citizen-soldier. 

To the old " inevitables," death and taxes, the 
German adds a third, military service. From the 
time he is old enough to go to school, he looks for- 
ward and plans for it. It is said that the first great 
event in the life of a German boy is his confirma- 
tion, and the second his first week as a soldier. A 
huge red placard appears one day on the bill-posting 
tower so familiar to German towns. It contains a 
list of the names of all the young men in the district 
who have reached military age, and his is among them. 
He has been expecting it,and he knows that the author- 
ities never forget. Already he and his parents have 
decided one important question regarding his service, 
and that is, whether he shall enter as an einjdhrige 
freiwillige, or volunteer to serve for one year only, or 
whether he must take the full service of two years. 

5 



66 Seen in Germany 



It is safe to say that every German boy has an ambi- 
tion to be a freiwillige, but with the greater majority 
of them it is an impossibility. For ?i freiwillige must 
have had a certain amount of schooHng, or his men- 
tal training must be sufficient to enable him to pass 
a specified examination ; and then, more difficult 
still, his parents must be financially able to support 
him while he is in the service, even to the extent of 
paying for his board and clothing. It is the demand 
of the government that every boy must serve, be his 
family rich or poor, noble or common ; but the gov- 
ernment assumes that the bright, capable boy will 
learn the drill and the instructions more quickly than 
the dull peasant boy, and, besides, the freiwillige 
system relieves the government of the support of 
a large number of soldiers, and, as I shall show later, 
economy is a cardinal virtue in the German military 
system. 

The physicians reject great numbers of the boys 
the first year, because they are not yet large or strong 
enough to bear the rigors of the service, and they are 
called again the next year. Boys with serious physi- 
cal defects, such as the loss of the trigger finger, or 
color-blindness, or curvature of the spine, are rejected 
entirely, usually to their keen regret. A few others 
also escape — cases in which a boy is the sole support 
of a widowed mother, and similar instances. But 
the authorities always keep a jealous eye on those 



i 



The German Private Soldier 



67 



who slip through, and should 
their conditions of life per- 
mit, within a reasonable num- 
ber of years, they must do 
their service with the others. 
So few Germans escape ser- 
vice entirely that it is a 
matter for mild suspicion and 
inquiry when a man says he 
has not served. The first 
question that a would-be em- 
ployer asks a man is, " Have 
you done your service, and 
where?" If the answer is 
in the negative, the next ques- 
tion is, "Why not? " for it is 
argued that if this man es- 
caped he must have some 
grave physical defect or else 
he must be cumbered with 
a family to support. Indeed, 
the sentiment of Germany is 
strongly against the man who 
has not served his time, and 
the boy who finds himself 
rejected by the examining 
physicians for any reason is 
frequently heart-broken, al- 




Present Arms 



68 Seen in Germany 



though, of course, there are many who would will- 
ingly escape with any excuse. 

Under certain conditions the freiwillige men and 
sometimes the two-year men may choose the regiment 
in which they wish to serve, for some regiments are 
more aristocratic than others, and they may some- 
times select the branch of the service which they pre- 
fer, whether infantry, cavalry, artillery, or engineers, 
although the great proportion of the men are assigned 
at the will of the officers. Service in the cavalry 
and artillery requires three years but there are men 
who are fond of horses and who choose the cavalry 
because it is schneidig^ a word best translated in Eng- 
lish slang " swell," although the work in the cavalry 
is more severe. 

A regiment is never made up entirely of new men. 
In the first place there is the skeleton framework of 
the noncommissioned officers (I am not considering 
here the commissioned officers) and usually a large 
residue of men who have already served one year. To 
these the new draft, awkward, callow, apparently 
hopelessly stupid, is added, and the officers are con- 
fronted with the discouraging task, old as armies. 
of beating this raw material into shape. The new 
recruit spends his first few weeks pretty closely in 
barracks. His old suit of clothes is packed up, 
labelled, and stored away, to be kept and returned to 
him when he finishes his service. He is fitted from 










T/ie Goo^e Step 



7© Seen in Germany 

among the oldest uniforms in the possession of the 
regiment, and he is set to such dispiriting tasks as clean- 
ing barracks and other duties quite as disagreeable to a 
boy who has been brought up in fairly good surround- 
ings. Such tasks as these are anything but a pleasant 
introduction to military life, but here comes in the 
national spirit of order and obedience to authority, 
and he obeys. The greatest man in the world to 
him just now is his corporal, whose business it is to 
knock off his rough corners, and none too gently. 
His first sergeant, the " mother of the regiment," is a 
planet as yet a little out of his orbit, and his captain 
is a fixed and distant star to be looked upon with awe 
and wonder. One of his first duties is to learn the 
" soldier marks " — the distinguishing uniform of 
his officers and how he must salute his superiors. 
In Germany, the code of etiquette as between officers 
and men is very rigid. The private is taught that 
he must obey every order of a superior absolutely 
and unquestioningly, and that he must invariably 
salute in exactly the proper way. Any one who 
visits Germany will see this saluting process on any 
corner. A sentinel comes to present arms, and fol- 
lows his officer with his eyes like a faithful dog until 
he is out of sight. A marching squad goes through 
that difficult, and, to the uninitiated, that amusing 
performance known in olden times as the " goose step.* 
Each man in the line raises his legs, thrusts out his 



The German Private Soldier 



71 



foot vigorously in front, and brings it down with a 
sharp stroke on the pavement. And thus " goose 
stepping," he marches until the officer has dis- 
appeared. 







\///m/// '■ 

Company Tailors 



The recruit is also taught the purpose of each 
article in his uniform and how it must be kept, and, 
what is more, he is held strictly responsible for 
every damage. Every button is looked after in a 
way which would astonish an American regular, who, 
by the way, is the most costly and careless soldier 



72 Seen in Germany 

in the world. One has only to watch a coat or 
boot Inspection which sometimes lasts for an hour, 
and to see the officers examine every seam and 
wrinkle, to be persuaded of the care taken. Not 
only are there regimental tailors and shoemakers de- 
tailed from among the men of those trades, but each 
young soldier is taught how to mend his clothing 
and to patch his boots, so that they always look well. 
Many regimental commanders take so keen a pride in 
preserving the uniforms of their men that they pile 
up great stocks of clothing in store. I heard of one 
regiment that possessed six complete uniforms for 
every man. As a consequence of this rigid supervis- 
ion, there is no soldier who looks neater and cleaner 
on all occasions than the German ; and I think it has 
had a profound effect on the whole German nation, 
for it is rare in Germany to see an untidy, ragged, and 
dirty man, however poor, whereas such specimens 
swarm the poorer districts of London and New 
York. 

After the recruit has become familiar with his bar- 
racks, his uniforms, and his officers, he is ready to 
begin active drilling, at first without a rifle. And 
this is hard work. Many of the boys are fresh from 
farm labor, and are already more or less stiff and awk- 
ward ; and frequently those from the cities, while 
more active, are not so strong. The exercise con- 
sists in throwing back the arms violently, expanding 



The German Private Soldier 73 

the chest, lowering and elevating the body by bend- 
ing the knees, and many similar movements calcu- 
lated to strengthen and render supple all the muscles 
of the body. Then there is the famous " long step." 
A whole company may be seen strutting across the 
parade ground, rising on one foot, and balancing 
there with the other leg extended until the order 
comes. Then down with the suspended foot in as 
long a step as possible, and up with the other. This 
seems simple enough, but v/hen a recruit has been at 
it half an hour or more he wishes devoutly for some- 
thing else. The long step is said to make the Ger- 
mans good marchers, to assist in giving them that 
quality of strength and endurance which, during the 
Franco-Prussian war, " marched the French to death." 
It is a favorite punishment for petty misdemeanors 
to force a soldier to go through these exercises for so 
manv minutes or hours. 

A little later, and, indeed, all through the service 
of the German soldier, there is constant drilling in all 
manner of athletic feats, particularly in jumping and 
climbing. I saw a squad of recruits practising the 
running high jump. They were all clad in old canvas 
uniforms of cheap make, their working clothes, and 
they stood in a line and jumped at the order of the 
officer. Every one of them was a strapping, round- 
faced fellow of evident strength, and yet some of 
them actually could not jump over a string two feet 




"K%,:,r%l 



Drill on the Horizontal Bar 



The German Private Soldier 75 

high. They had had no training, and they possessed 
no idea of how to utilize their muscles. But with 
a year or two of steady training they make good 
jumpers. More advanced squads are set to work on 
the horizontal bar ; the training here is very practical, 
with little attempt to teach the high swings and fancy 
movements. Then there are vaulting exercises and 
scaling exercises, in which a squad of men are sent 
charging at a sheer board wall fifteen or twenty feet 
high, made to represent a fort, and up they go on 
one another's knees and backs, rifles and all, until 
every man is on top ; and it is astonishing to see 
how well and how quickly it is all done. In watch- 
ing these men at their work, one is impressed with 
the sober earnestness with which every task is per- 
formed. There is rarely a smile, never anything like 
a cheer, and no apparent appreciation of the fact that 
these exercises are sometimes practised as sport. To 
these men it is a serious duty, not especially enjoy- 
able, but endurable. No recruits in the world are 
worked so hard as the Germans ; for hours they are 
kept at this physical training, one exercise after an- 
other. Some men it has killed by its severity, but 
most of them thrive under it, so that at the end of a 
year many a frail stripling of a lad has become a 
brawny, bronzed-faced soldier, able to stand any 
hardship. There can be no doubt that this vigorous 
military training has had a profound effect on the 



76 Seen in Germany 

German people. The German is by nature physic- 
ally indolent : he has little love for violent sports such 
as the Englishman and the American enjoy ; he pre- 
fers to sit quietly in some little back-yard forest of 
evergreens growing in tubs and sip his beer. The 
military training in a measure stirs him out of this 
lethargy, and gives him the physical strength that he 
needs. 

After several weeks of preliminary training, the re- 
cruit is given his rifle. He is required to learn every- 
thing about it, the purpose of each part, and how it 
should be cleaned and kept. Then begins the long 
training in the manual of arms, a branch in which the 
Germans are especially proficient. The drill is car- 
ried even to practice with the bayonet and bayonet 
tournaments, the bayonets, of course, being rendered 
harmless by a clot of cloth wound around the point. 
I have seen two men, shielded with breast padding 
and cage masks, fight with much vigor and precision, 
and give each other some pretty vigorous thrusts. If 
a modern battle should by any remote possibility 
reach the point of a face-to-face bayonet struggle, 
these big German soldiers, trained as they are, would 
unquestionably make short work of their adversaries. 

And now comes the drill in formation, which is 
not unlike that in other countries, except, probably, 
in its minute thoroughness. Indeed, thoroughness 
is the very essence of the German training. Not 




Bayonet Practice 



78 Seen in Germany 



long ago I read a criticism in an English paper, anent 
the South African war, to the effect that the English 
commissioned officers left too much of the prelim- 
inary training, and indeed of regular drill work, to 
their subordinates, the sergeants and the corporals. 
In the German army this is not the case; the com- 
missioned officer is never far off, and he is constantly 
at work with his men, teaching and training them. 
A familiar sight on a German drill ground is a cap- 
tain or a lieutenant talking to his company to the 
length almost of a lecture, advising and instructing. 
The casual visitor in a German city, who sees the 
German officers strolling about of an afternoon in 
their fine uniforms, with their sabre scabbards mirror- 
bright in the sunshine and their spurs clinking, is 
quite likely to set these men down as " tin soldiers," 
rich men's sons who have found an easy and showy 
career in the army. But if this visitor takes pains to 
inquire, he will find that most of these officers were 
out at five o'clock in the morning or before, and that 
by the time the ordinary citizen is out of bed, they 
have been for hours at hard work. 

Indeed, it is the principle of the German military 
system to work its men hard, to inure them to all the 
hardships of war, so that in case they are called sud- 
denly into the field, a forced march will not send 
them all to hospital. One hot June day I saw 
several companies go charging across a drill ground 




Pontoon Bridge Building 



8o Seen in Germany 



in heavy marching order. They were clad in blue 
flannel, with metal helmets, and they must have 
carried at least fifty pounds each on their backs. 
Every man was dripping with perspiration and chok- 
ing with dust, but no mercy was shown. They were 
carrying every pound that would have been carried 
in a campaign, and they were being trained by 
hard service to stand it. 

Besides the company, battalion, and regimental 
drill, which is kept up constantly during the entire 
time of the soldiers' service, there are, every year and 
sometimes oftener, great gatherings of soldiers from 
all parts of the empire at what is known as the spring 
or fall maneuvers. The Kaiser himself, than whom 
there is no more enthusiastic soldier in the empire, 
is fond of the pageantry of these great gatherings. 
Here the men are trained as though on an active 
campaign, maneuvered in divisions and corps, often 
in sham battle, some fighting from trenches, some 
skirmishing in the open, others bridging rivers and 
effecting crossings as if under fire. The three arms 
of the service are trained together, so that the in- 
fantry will work in perfect harmony with the cavalry 
and the cavalry with the artillery. In no other army 
in the world, perhaps, is so much attention paid to 
training the men, and especially the officers, in these 
great and necessary evolutions. Many officers can 
handle a regiment perfectly, but when it comes to 



The German Private Soldier 8i 

disposing a division in a masterly manner they fall 
short. And in the German army the ideal soldier is 
Von Moltke, " the battle-thinker," the man who can 
dispose great forces with wisdom, not the daring hero 
who rides recklessly at the head of his men and 
foolishly risks his life. In this respect the Germans 
are totally different from the French or the Anglo- 
Saxons, who dearly love the hero — the man of great 
personal bravery — and who are quite likely to clamor 
that such a man be rewarded with a high command 
regardless of his fitness as a " battle-thinker." 

It has been said by critics that the weakest point 
in the German army is its marksmanship. Thou- 
sands of German boys entering service, perhaps a 
majority of them, have never touched a rifle until 
it is placed in their hands for drilling. In general, 
a German is not born with the love of a gun, like 
an American ; and he rarely has an opportunity to 
use a rifle outside of the service. In America every 
farmer's boy begins to shoot rabbits as soon as he 
can hold the old shot gun without wobbling ; and as 
he grows older the love of shooting grows with him, 
but in Germany there is no such natural training, 
and the military training is limited, owing to the 
very great cost of ammunition. And still, the Ger- 
man soldier does much target shooting. He begins 
with a specially made rifle, in weight and general 
appearance exactly like the Mauser, but so arranged 



82 



Seen in Germany 



that it fires a small cartridge, having a bullet hardly 
larger than a pea. A miniature target is set up only 
ten to twenty feet away from the firer, and here he 




Rifle Practice n.vith Miniature Target 

practises aiming, setting the sight, holding the gun 
steadily, and so on, thereby saving the waste of 
larger ammunition. After he has become proficient 
in this work, he goes to the regular shooting ranges 



The German Private Soldier 83 

and is there required to fire a little each week, until 
he can make a certain score. But it is probable that 
most German soldiers never come to really familiar 
shooting relations with their rifles. 

While all this physical training and drill is going 
forward, the intellectual development of the man 
also goes forward apace. There are regular classes 
in which instruction is given, not in the familiar 
branches of the schools, — for every German soldier 
knows how to read and write before he enters the 
service, — but in broader subjects. The soldier is in- 
structed as to who is his emperor, who his king, and 
what his duties are to each ; he is given lessons in 
history in so far as they relate to military affairs, and 
in the geography of Germany with an idea of the mili- 
tary defense of the nation, of its power and its future. 
Strange as it may seem, there are men who enter the 
army with the haziest idea of the Kaiser, some even 
who have never heard of him and who know little or 
nothing about their country ; all this training is not 
only in the way of a broadening education, but it stirs 
the springs of patriotism in the heart of every man, 
and he goes back to his home, when the service is 
over, with a new idea of the world and its possibili- 
ties. Just here it may be well to mention the fact 
that the military service has been an important 
factor in unifying the interests of Germany — the 
nation, as is well known, being made up of many 



84 Seen in Germany 

rival states and differing nationalities. It has been 
the policy of the empire, as in Italy, to take men, 
say from the Polish or Danish or French border, 
where the sympathies were likely to be anti-German, 
and scatter them through the Prussian and other 
intensely German regiments. In this way doubtful 
borderers are given a thorough training in patriotism, 
and usually leave the army good Germans with a 
feeling of pride in the new empire. 

The one-year " volunteers," of whom there are 
about nine thousand in an army of half a million, — 
the men with the black and white braid on their 
shoulder-straps, — are not subjected to quite so severe 
a training as the two-year men. Usually they are 
required to live in barracks only a short time, and 
afterwards they may board where they please, pro- 
vided they are always on time for work. It is 
common also for them to employ a " putz kamerad" 
(cleaning comrade), who looks after their clothing 
and rifle, and they escape much of the drudgery of 
barracks, but they are compelled to take the same 
training and drills as the other men. It costs the 
parents of a volunteer from 2000 marks (^500) up- 
ward to pay his wav through a year's service, 

Germany is said to manage its military system 
considering its equipment more cheaply than any 
other nation. The whole vast army of Germany 
does not cost the government as much each year as 



The German Private Soldier 



85 



the United States pays in pensions. The ordinary 
army expenses of Germany for the year 1900 were 
1131,308,900, and the total for the year, including 
extraordinary expenses, was 1161,500,000. Yet this 
is an enormous increase over the expense of a few 




Cavalrymen tilting ijoith Muffled Lances 

years ago, being more than double that of 1872 
and half more than that of 1890, showing that mili- 
tary prowess is yearly becoming a heavier burden. 
And this sum, great as it is, does not include the 
wages of over a half million men lost to industry. 



86 Seen in Germany 

agriculture, and commerce. According to the esti- 
mates of 1900 the strength of the army on its peace 
footing was 571,692, of whom 491,136 were privates 
and 80,556 were noncommissioned officers. Be- 
sides these there were 23,850 officers and over 
5,000 other military officials of various kinds. And 
not included in these estimates are about 9,000 one- 
year volunteers who serve at their own cost. 

Rigid economy is the watchword of the entire sys- 
tem. Only a rich man may become an officer, for to a 
large extent he must pay his own way, a major general 
receiving a salary of barely I185 a month from the 
government, while a second lieutenant gets only 
about $20 a month, or about the pay of an Ameri- 
can sergeant. As for the common soldiers, their 
pay and board are so meagre that it seems all but im- 
possible that grown men, and hard-working men at 
that, should subsist and thrive on so little. Indeed, 
the entire cost of the German soldier to the empire 
is only I17.30 a month, and this covers all expenses 
for food, clothing, equipment, and wages. The pay 
of an ordinary private is about nine cents a day, but 
out of this he must pay two and one half cents for 
his dinner, leaving him in cash only about six and 
one half cents a day, and in almost every case this 
small wage must be spent entirely for food. For the 
only free ration of a German soldier is a huge, thick 
loaf of black bread, very nutritious, but monotonous 



The German Private Soldier 87 

when eaten for every meal, and coffee or soup. The 
bread ration is issued every three or four days ; and 
upon this and the coffee, with a possible dish of soup 
in the morning, the soldier must exist, unless he has 
means of his own, so far as free rations are concerned. 
At noon, however, he is provided with a sort of meat 
stew — in America it would be called an Irish stew — 
which is warm, nutritious, and palatable. This costs 
ten pfennigs (two and one half cents), and by piecing 
out with his black bread the soldier makes a very 
good meal. I asked a German captain what the pri- 
vates had for supper, and he paused as if a little un- 
certain. Then he answered, — 

"Nothing": then he corrected himself, "Oh, 
they always have their black bread." 

This great black loaf is always with them ; it is in- 
deed the staff of life. To many of the peasant sol- 
diers it is as good a living as they ever have had at 
home, but it comes hard on some of the more gently 
nurtured youth of the cities. The French soldier 
is fed twice as well as this, and receives a wine ration 
besides, but the German does not even get his beer ; 
and still a more robust and vigorous lot of men than 
the privates of the German army could not be found. 
Many soldiers receive steady supplies of food from 
home, and great is the receiving day in barracks, 
what with fat sausages, eggs, and dainties such as 
only the soldier boy's mother thinks of slipping in. 



88 



Seen in Germany 



Small as is the wage received by the soldier, yet 
the army regulations guard it jealously, for frugality 
is part of the training. Each soldier places his money 
in a little bag suspended from a string around his 
neck. At any time during inspection the officer may 




Coat Inspection 

demand to have the bags opened, and if it is found 
that any soldier spends his six cents a day wages 
too rapidly — think of the wild dissipation which 
might be had for six cents a day — he is repri- 
manded and punished. He must make his wages, 



The German Private Soldier 89 

small as they are, cover his expenses ; he must 
not spend them instantly for beer. 

In the Anglo-Saxon countries the army has ac- 
quired the name, unfortunately, of being a hard life 
morally, and one has to go no further than the works 
of Mr. Rudyard Kipling to be convinced that the 
civilian looks upon soldierly peccadilloes with a wink- 
ing eye. More or less drunkenness and lawlessness, 
more 's the pity, seems to be regarded as the natural 
and proper pastime of the hero. It is therefore the 
natural assumption of the English-speaker that a 
great army such as that of Germany necessarily means 
much disorder, drunkenness, and immorality, but 
never was there anything further from the truth. It 
is a rare thing to see a drunken German soldier ; and 
as for fighting, a single Irish regiment would keep the 
whole German army well supplied and have a good 
many broken heads left over. The fact is, the Ger- 
man soldier is worked up to the limit of his strength, 
and when he is through with a day's exercises he is 
quite willing to roll into his bunk. Most of the 
soldiers are poor, with no money to spend on dissi- 
pation and all of them have their ambitions for a 
civil career as soon as they are through with their 
service. Moreover, it is not in the nature of the 
German to go to wild excesses in anything. As 
a consequence, wherever you find him, the German 
soldier is well-behaved, and apparently always under 



90 



Seen in Germany 



discipline. He usually has an hour or two off in 
the afternoon or evening, and after chapel service he 
is usually free on Sunday, and you see him neat and 




T/ie Soldier s Hour Off 

clean, though often awkward and clumsy, parading 
about the street, frequently holding the hand of a 
rosy-cheeked girl or sitting in the park, unabashed, 
with his arm around her. He lacks the inimitable 



The German Private Soldier 91 

jauntiness of the English red-coat with his little cap 
cocked over his ear, and he has none of the activity 
and sprightliness of the gay-clad French soldier, but 
there he stands solidly in his big, coarse boots, a seri- 
ous and simple-minded fellow, intent on doing his 
duty, slow and clumsy, it is true, but with strength 
and determination — a soldier every inch of him. 
He is not good in initiative ; his whole training, 
indeed, the whole life of the German empire, tends to 
crush out individuality, to train him that he is nothing, 
and that his company and his regiment and his em- 
peror are everything, that he must obey implicitly. 
The present Kaiser, in an address to his soldiers, once 
said : — 

" The soldier should not have a will of his own, but 
all of you should have one will, and that is my will. 
There exists only one law, and that is my law ; and 
now go and do your duty, and be obedient to your 
superiors." 

So the German soldier waits patiently for orders ; 
and when they come he obeys, no matter what 
obstacle lies in the way. And in the next Euro- 
pean war he will be absolutely invincible — if he 
is well led. There lies the test of this splendid 
military machine — in its leaders. 

No stone is left unturned by the government to 
promote the efficiency of the army. In order to 
tempt good men to remain after their regular service 



92 Seen in Germany 

and to become noncommissioned officers, a series of 
civil-service rewards for military service is in opera- 
tion. A noncommissioned officer who serves faith- 
fully for so many years may become a policeman or 
fireman, or may be chosen for important service in 
the government offices. He is also given preference 
for employment on the railroads, which are govern- 
ment property, and on other government works, 
and the government service has a degree of honor 
attached to it which many men covet. As a result 
of this system of encouragement, the military service 
has been placed on a high level and the civil service 
has been filled with military men, and it breathes 
forth everywhere the slow, methodical, exact, etiquette- 
demanding spirit of the barracks and the parade 
ground. 

Thus briefly, for the subject is worthy of a large 
volume, I have sketched the making of a German 
soldier, of a necessity omitting much of interesting 
detail, especially regarding the cavalry, artillery, and 
engineer branches of the service, but endeavoring to 
give some idea of the spirit of what is without 
doubt the greatest military svstem the world ever 
saw. I have perforce omitted a consideration of the 
German commissioned officer except incidentally, ow- 
ing to the scope of the subject and because the train- 
ing of the German officer, while almost as severe as 
that of the private and, of course, much more com- 



The German Private Soldier 93 

plete, seems to me to be less peculiarly significant of 
German life and institutions. The German officer 
belongs to a profession known the world over — like 
a lawyer or a doctor ; the German private is a type 
peculiar to the German nation. 



IV 

A VIEW OF THE GERMAN 
WORKINGMAN ' 



IV 

A VIEW OF THE GERMAN WORKINGMAN 

His Daily Life, his Earnings, his Wife, his Food, his 
Clothing, his Problems, and his Relations with 
his Government 

SINCE early morning German workingmen with 
their wives and children have been coming up 
from the crowded, red-tiled houses of the town, 
loitering across patchwork fields and reach- 
ing at last the paths along the hillsides. They are 
clad in Sunday best, poor but neat and clean, with 
bright patches of color and a certain engaging quaint- 
ness of style. The man of the family goes first, his 
hard black hands clasped behind him, and his wife 
follows with the children. She is talking in the 
mellow German intonation with a neighbor further 
down the hill, who also has a fiock of children. 
Occasionally they stop to rest for a time on one 
of the green seats provided by some verein, and look 
out over the familiar valley where the town lies asleep 
in the June sunshine with the lazy breath of banked 
fires rising from a hundred tall chimneys. It is an 
orderly gathering, even to the good-humored, prank- 

7 



98 Seen in Germany 

less children, as orderly as the well-kept paths, the 
pine trees set in prim, clean rows, the white signs 
which indicate the direction and provide other advice 
and warning, all the work of a motherly, if severe, 
government. Thus they stroll upward along the 
paths, which, though devious, have a wav of coming 
out invariably at a pleasant little inn with tables set 
outside among the trees. And they never end until 
the workman is just thirsty enough, and not too 
thirsty. 

Here white-aproned waiters rush about with tall 
wooden mugs of pale beer and sandwiches of Wiener- 
wurst, In a corner a funriy little orchestra, three 
fat men each with a mug of beer before him, is play- 
ing two violins and a 'cello. Among these familiar 
surroundings the workman gathers his family at a 
table and orders a mug of beer ; one does well for all 
of them, and they drink out of it in turn. When it 
is empty they have it filled again ; three or four in 
an afternoon, costing ten or fifteen cents (for it is a 
cheap beer containing little alcohol), are quite enough 
to give them a glow of friendliness, so that toward 
evening, when the singing begins, they may all lend 
their voices with vigor and enjoyment. Here, too, 
come young lovers hand in hand or with arms 
around each other, as if it were the most common- 
place thing in the world, and they are so evidently 
and beamingly happy that one cannot but envy them; 



A View of the German Workingman 99 

they, too, drink out of one mug and divide a sand- 
wich, and say much to each other without caring 
particularly whether their neighbors overhear or not. 
The host, a jolly red-cheeked man In a worn black 
dress-coat, comes often about with his good-humored 
Gut en Abend and his pleasant inquiries as to whether 
the beer is good ; and he bows only a bit more 
solicitously to the well-to-do householder, who 
sits with democratic simplicity among the men whom 
he, perhaps, employs, than he does to the workman 
whose purse allows him only a single mug at a time. 
Looking upon this jovial gathering, one is almost 
convinced that here at last is contentment. Ap- 
parently these men and their wives are without a 
worry or a care in the world ; here is a taste of the 
free country after the grimy city, the beer is good, 
the weather is bright, the music is sweet among the 
trees, and sweeter still to these born lovers of music, 
and here are friends and neighbors overflowing with 
a whole week's gossip. What more could a man 
want ? And when evening approaches, and while the 
young people's voices are filling the woods with song, 
the workman goes downward again toward the twink- 
ling city. He is rested and refreshed after the day's 
enjoyment, having gone to no violent excesses of 
drink, or food, or exercise, or expenditure. His 
family has enjoyed it with him, and his children are 
learning the same simple means of pleasure. 



loo Seen in Germany 

And this is the workman's Sunday as it is spent 
ahnost everywhere in the Fatherland. Even in the 
big, black cities, which are yearly growing bigger 
and blacker, where there is no escape from streets and 
houses, the workman still finds, on Sunday, some 
imitation of the country, perhaps in a high-fenced 
inn yard where the trees grow in green tubs, and 
where there is always sociability, music, and beer — 
that trinity of Teutonic happiness. Somehow, some- 
where, not always as happily or as moderately as 
among the hills of the picture, the German workman 
finds opportunity for getting a little enjoyment out 
of life. It may not be of the high order approved 
by those who have set up Anglo-Saxon standards, and 
yet one has only to compare the simple, care-free, 
temperate Sunday of the average German workman 
with what is too often the spendthrift, viciously idle, 
and drunken Sunday of many American and more 
English workmen, to appreciate its worth. 

A picture such as I have painted of the workman's 
Sunday may well seem too brightly colored. It is, 
indeed, the result of first impressions which were 
vivid and perhaps over-enthusiastic. But it is true, 
every line of it — as true as ever a one-sided picture 
can be — and I have here given it first prominence 
with intention, because it shows the really fine side of 
German work-life, the ideal side, the Sunday which 
makes the other six days of the week at all endurable. 




f^ 



^ 



Co 






I02 Seen in Germany 

It is indeed a most vital element of German life 
which one is too likely to forget in considering the 
crowding evidences of toil, poverty, and restriction ; 
the more one learns of the grim and forbidding reverse 
presentation of the toiler's existence the more keenly 
he appreciates these rare qualities of temperament, 
strengthened by centuries of bitter training, which 
enables the German workman to go on year after 
year with a smooth brow gathering figs of thistles. 

With all its simple enjoyment, it is probable that 
no civilized workman in the world would change places 
with the German. For few, indeed, work longer hours 
for smaller pay, eat coarser and cheaper food, live in 
more crowded homes, and none gives more in time 
and substance to a government which in return hems 
him in and restricts him with an infinite multiplicity 
of rules and regulations, and curtails his right of free 
speech, none has less control over that which is his 
own, for even the spending of a part of his meagre 
wages is ordered by law, and few there are who pos- 
sess less influence in making the laws which regulate 
their conduct. And yet — and here one rises to 
wonder and admiration — these men have learned 
how to extract enjoyment out of a life the conditions 
of which, judged by our standards, are so close to 
poverty and servitude as to be almost within the 
bounds of misery. 

Consider the workmen in the manufacturing and 



A View of the German Workingman 103 

ship-building towns of northern Germany, where in- 
dustrial development and prosperity have caused a 
demand for every sort of labor which equals or ex- 
ceeds the supply. Practically there are no workmen 
out of employment, neither men nor women, and 
wages are generally higher than they ever were before 
in Germany. Here one sees the workingman under 
what would seem to be the most favorable conditions. 
Yet in many respects, as I shall point out, his cir- 
cumstances are by no means as satisfactory as they 
were several years ago, and there are signs that, 
though his patience has seemed unlimited, even he 
is beginning to feel and chafe under the stress of the 
strenuous conditions of German industry. 

The German workingman, even he who is a mas- 
ter of a trade, is supposed to work eleven hours 
a day or sixty-six hours a week, rarely less, often 
longer. At Stettin in Pomerania, where there is a 
great ship-building establishment, iron works, and 
many other manufactories, a carpenter in the ship 
yards, as I was informed by Mr. John E. Kehl, 
United States Consul, will receive about 90 cents a 
day for 1 1 hours' work. In America a carpenter com- 
monly expects $ 2.50 to $3.00 a day for 8 hours' work, 
and sometimes more. A blacksmith in the German 
city earns less than the carpenter, a molder more, or 
about $1 a day, a painter receives about 75 cents, 
while a laborer is doing well to get ^^ to 60 cents 



1 04 Seen in Germany 

a day. Carpenters and other workers not employed 
regularly commonly earn more per day, or they may 
do piecework which brings them larger returns. In 
some parts of Germany, notably in the Rhine dis- 
tricts, wages range higher than those here given, 
while in other districts which I visited they are 
lower. 

These returns for long hours of work, small as 
they are, show large increases over the wages of a few 
years ago. For instance, in 1885 carpenters who 
now receive 90 cents a day were paid only 73 cents, 
while painters' wages have risen in the same time 
from 51 to 75 cents. But if wages have increased, 
the prices of all sorts of commodities, also, have 
largely risen, and rent, owing to the rapid growth 
of cities and the influx of workmen, has gone upward 
by leaps and bounds. In 15 years the working 
population of Germany has increased from 7,340,789 
to 10,900,000. It was only a few years ago that 
Germany was famous for its cheap living. A work- 
man could live in comfort for a sum almost un- 
believably small. Now, however, the staples of food 
actually cost the German more than they do the 
American — a statement which may seem startling 
enough, considering the reputation of the United 
States for high prices. In Stettin, beef, which in 
1893 cost 14 cents a pound, had risen in 1899 to 23 
cents. Mutton was 20 cents (compared with 12 cents 



A View of the German Workingman i 05 




'^ ,c e n t s 



"^milk 5 cents a 
quart. It must 
be here ad- 
mitted, h o w- 
ever, that in 
most of these commodities which among American 
workmen would be considered absolute necessaries 
of life, the German workman never indulges. He 



Returning from JVork — German Ship Yards 



io6 Seen in Germany 

must have coffee and plenty of it, and a little meat. 
Butter is practically unknown to him, lard being 
used in its stead. He rarely uses milk, eggs, or 
white flour, and he never thinks of buying any 
of the better cuts of meat. Canned goods, familiar 
to every American worker, are absolutely unknown 
to him. His staple food is rye-bread, which he 
buys in enormous loaves. His wife or his little 
girl goes to market for this bread and brings it 
home clasped in her arms, unwrapped. I have 
seen a little tot of a tow-headed girl staggering 
homeward with a loaf almost as big as she was, and 
as she walked she gnawed lustily at the flinty end of 
the loaf Indeed, I have heard it said that the eating 
of this hard-crusted bread gives the German work- 
man teeth of unequalled excellence. And this bread 
is good, thoroughly good. The government, which 
supervises everything and everybody, guards the rye- 
bread of the people with jealous care. The bakers 
are watched, compelled to give full weight, and make 
good bread. ^ I have eaten it in a number of differ- 

1 The Magdeburg Zeitung of November 2, 1900, contains the follow- 
ing account of a few new regulations proposed by the Imperial Ministry 
of the Interior for the regulation of bakeries: 

In the future the floor of a bakery must not be deeper than half a 
meter (20 inches) below the surface of the ground ; the baking rooms 
must be 3 meters (10 feet) high, and must be provided with windows 
capable of supplying all parts of such rooms with air and light. In 
bakeries where regularly more than two assistants and apprentices are 



A View of the German Workingman 107 

ent towns, and it was always sweet to the taste and 
wholesome. This bread is fairly cheap, costing usu- 
ally from 35 to 50 pfennigs (9 to 12 cents) a loaf, 
though it, too, has risen in price with increased de- 
mand. Upon this great loaf the German empire may 
be said to rest; all Germany has grown up on it. It 
is the basic ration of the German army, and many a 
peasant can live very well for a considerable time 
though he has nothing else to eat. 

Next in order of importance after the rye-loaf is 
sausage. In Germany the wurstwaaren shops are 
a sight to interest and attract foreign eyes. Such a 
variety of sausages, big, little, and middle-sized, 
brown, white, and black, soft and hard, raw and 
cooked, covered and uncovered, one never before 
imagined possible. Step into a sausage shop of an 
evening, and you will see the German workman's 
wife in all her glory, for here she finds the truest 
outlet for that feminine shopping instinct which even 

employed, separate rooms must be provided for the preparation and the 
baking of the bread. The number of persons employed in each room 
must be so regulated that at least 15 cubic meters (530 cubic feet) of air 
is available for each person. The temperature in the working rooms 
must not exceed 35° C. (95° F.), and there must be connected therewith 
heated dressing and washing rooms which the employees can reach with- 
out exposing themselves to drafts. In cases where these requirements 
cannot be complied with without rebuilding, during the first ten years, 
nothing will be required beyond the correction of serious evils which can 
be effected without much expense. 



io8 Seen in Germany 



here has taken root. Shall she buy brown or white; 
shall she have one slice of a big blood sausage or a 
ringlet of little liver sausages ? And usually she 
goes away with a stick of dry wurst about the size 
and shape of a policeman's club and for purposes of 
defense quite as useful. But this sausage, too, is 
wholesome and good, though growing always dearer, 
for the government never allows the sausage-makers 
a moment out of its surveillance. Indeed, it may 
be said that nowhere in the world is the food gen- 
erally purer than in Germany. The most stringent 
laws against adulteration have been enacted, and 
everything is inspected and reinspected by a cloud 
of officials. I have had meat served me at table 
on which I could make out plainly the inspector's 
blue stamp. And that is one great advantage which 
the German workman possesses over the American 
and English. 

After sausage comes cheese. One is never at a 
loss in a German city to find a cheese shop. Just go 
outside and sniff, then follow your nose. I presume 
that there is not such a cheese shop in America, un- 
less transplantations have been made in Milwaukee or 
Chicago, as these curious little places in every Ger- 
man city. Here are cheeses in great variety, both as 
to size, as to strength, and as to price ; I have 
not gone to extremes in trying these cheeses, but 
some of the less pronounced are very good indeed. 



A View of the German Workingman 109 

These are the main articles of the German work- 
man's diet. To these he adds plenty of black coffee, 
unsweetened ; occasionally he has meat soup, pota- 
toes, cabbages, or other vegetables, and frequently 
dried and smoked fish, of which the German markets 
present a great variety. This is the regular diet ; and 
the workman — indeed, the entire lower half of Ger- 
many — departs little from it, although varying condi- 
tions in diiferent sections of the country change it 
slightly. Added to this food there is invariably beer 
in as great a quantity as the workman can afford. 
This beer, though often poor and weak, is always 
unadulterated and as wholesome as beer ever can be 
— the government looks out for that. 

Usually the workman has five meals a day. To 
work eleven hours, especially if he lives miles from the 
shop or factory, which is often the case, a man must 
be stirring at cock's crow. As soon as he is up, 
usually in the gray twilight, or in winter by candle- 
light, he has a cup of strong, hot black coffee 
and a wedge of rye-bread. This is the first meal. 
Second breakfast comes about eight o'clock ; and if a 
man is working, he stops at that time and sits down 
for a few minutes while he eats. Again he has black 
coffee, hot if possible, and rye-bread with sausages 
or cheese. Then comes the long nooning of an hour 
or sometimes longer. It is a sight well worth seeing, 
the rush of workmen from a German factory at noon. 



I 10 



Seen in Germany 



Usually for fifteen minutes or more before the whistle 
sounds, short-skirted, comely women, girls, and old 
men have been gathering at the gates with baskets 
and bottles ; and at the sound of the whistle they all 










Noon Hour 

rush in and are swallowed up by the outflowing 
current of men. Dinner is the most pretentious 
meal of the day. Usually there is meat soup, some- 
times with the meat from which it has been made, 
boiled potatoes, or some other vegetable, bread, and 
beer or coffee. Having finished eating, the men 



A View of the German Workingman i i i 

drop down to rest, saying little, thinking little, and 
waiting for the whistle to call them back again. The 
German workman is for the most part silent, slow, 
heavy, and apparently without emotion on these work- 
ing days. He seems always tired. At four o'clock 
in the afternoon there is another meal, called vespers, 
for which there is a recess of ten or fifteen minutes. 
More coffee from the little blue dinner-pails and 
a wedge of rye-bread, spread, perhaps, with lard, and 
the workman is ready again for his task. The 
last meal of the day comes after nightfall, when the 
toiler reaches home ; it is as simple as the others, 
consisting of the inevitable coffee or beer, bread, 
smoked fish, or sausage or cheese. That is all ; 
and when it is eaten the workman is quite ready for 
his bed, especially if he has had to walk several miles 
to and from his work, as many do. And this must 
continue year after year, for German families are 
large and there are always little mouths to feed. 
No American workman would think of livino- as 
cheaply as this ; and yet the German does it, partly 
because he cannot afford more food and partly 
because he knows of no better way, yet he has 
enough, coarse and plain though it is, to keep him 
well, with perhaps fewer doctors' bills to pay on 
account of stomach troubles than his rivals in other 
lands. The total cost of the food for a family of 
a man, wife, and two children during one day 



1 1 2 Seen in Germany 



has been estimated in Pomerania at about thirty- 
five cents. 

I have been told that the German system of fre- 
quent meals and frequent rests assists greatly in 
enabling the workmen to endure without injury the 
long hours of work ; but I should think that the 
rate of work would be quite as potent a factor. 
The German works carefully, thoroughly, but with 
infinite slowness. Every operation is performed 
with almost machine-like steadiness ; but there is 
nowhere a spark of that briskness, that electricity 
of expending nervous force, which one feels in a 
great American workshop. The German has 
saved his nerves ; perhaps that may help to account 
for his stolid endurance. 

Not only does the German workman eat cheap 
food, but he lives in the cheapest quarters — often not 
more than two or three rooms even for a large family, 
and frequently one of these is without windows. Yet 
the home is ordinarily pretty well kept up, as the 
homes of workmen go. There are often flowers in 
the windows, for the German, both high and low, 
loves his flower-garden, even if the comfort within 
is small. There is little kitchen equipment and 
fewer dishes. The workman's wife has no knowl- 
edge of cooking except in its most primitive form. 
The family food, as I have shown, is nearly all bought 
in a form ready for consumption — bread, cheese. 



A View of the German Workingman 1 1 3 

sausage, dried fish, beer. Soup and coffee require a 
modicum of skill in cookery, the vegetables merely 
requiring boiling. Give a German woman of the 
lower class a new article of food requiring cooking, 
and she would not know what to do with it. All this 
is the result, in part at least, of untold years of prac- 
tical serfdom on the part of the German peasantry 
from whom these workmen have sprung — a peas- 
antry which was, and still is to a large extent, fed 
from the kitchen of the landlord, like house-servants, 
so that both men and women might work without 
loss of time in the fields. The simplicity of a diet 
largely cold or bought ready to eat, and the haste 
with which all culinary matters are swept aside, may 
be set down as one of the influences which has main- 
tained cheap labor in Germany, but it has left the 
Germans as a nation the worst cooks in the civilized 
world, and it has not tended to raise the estate of the 
German woman, nor to develop an attractive family 
life. 

Rents vary greatly with conditions, of course. In 
Stettin, Mr. Kehl informed me, apartments of two 
or three rooms in tenement houses could be had for 
$ 2.25 to I2.50 a month. The municipality in- 
sists upon clean streets and sewers in tenement dis- 
tricts in all parts of Germany ; and in certain towns, 
notably in Krupp's city of Essen, an effort has 
been made to give especially good homes to the 



114 Seen in Germany 

workingmen, although the rents are not lower than 
elsewhere. 

Clothing, such as workmen wear, is cheap in 
Germany, almost the only necessary of life that is 
cheap. Leather shoes, being very expensive, are 
comparatively little worn, except on Sunday. In 
their place the workman has his pantoffels made 
of a thick wooden sole, the toe being covered over 
with leather. In winter these are worn with thick, 
home-knit socks, and in summer they are frequently 
slipped on the bare feet. One imagines that they 
slide off easily, but I have often seen boys who wore 
them run at the top of their speed, there being an 
art in turning down the toes when the foot is lifted 
and clamping the pantoffels so that they cannot slip 
off. The clacking of wooden soles on the floors of 
a German workshop is a sound quite foreign to 
American ears. The old-fashioned blouse falling 
from a yoke at the shoulders is still worn by German 
workmen, though it is disappearing. 

Coal costs at Stettin $4.52 a ton — that is, soft 
coal ; kerosene is much more expensive than it is 
in America. 

It will be seen, therefore, that while food and other 
necessaries of life with the possible exception of 
clothing are as high or higher in Germany than in 
the United States, wages generally will average hardly 
more than one third as much. Yet the German 



A View of the German Workingman i i 5 

workman is able to exist because he is willing to do 
without all sorts of comforts familiar to every Ameri- 
can workman. 

I have described the conditions as I learned about 
them in Pomerania because it seemed necessary in 
such an account as this to be specific; but I have 
kept always in mind my own observations as well as 
the published reports and statistics concerning other 
parts of the empire. Professor von Halle of the 
University of Berlin, who has made a very close 
study of industrial conditions in and around Stettin, 
informs me that the extraordinary growth there has 
served to increase rentals and prices of commodi 
ties very rapidly. He also found that Stettin was 
one of the first stopping-places for the great tide of 
workingmen which is constantly flowing from east 
to west. The Rhine districts of Germany, the cen- 
tre of the coal, iron, chemical, and other industries 
of the empire, are the great loadstones of labor. 
Raw peasants from the Russian border stop at 
Stettin and other Baltic towns, and at Breslau, remain 
for a time and then go on westward looking for better 
wages, and finding conditions equally hard. Indeed, 
this silent march of empire westward has so drained 
some of the eastern districts of Germany that num- 
bers of Russians and Austrian Poles and Bohemians 
must be brought into the country yearly to help with 
the agricultural operations. The same conditions exist |j 



1 1 6 Seen in Germany 



in southern Germany, where the Italian is making 
his appearance, as in America, to do the hard manual 
labor. Few of these foreigners, however, are allowed 
to remain, even though they may wish to do so. 

One of the strangest influences upon the develop- 
ment of the German workingman has been his 
compulsory military service, and it is very far from 
being an unmixed evil, though it demands two of 
the best years of his lite. 

It has certainly had a profound influence in train- 
ing the German to obedience, methods of order, hard 
work, plain living, and frugality. It has also braced 
him physically. On the other hand, it has tended to 
weaken individuality, deaden the initiative faculties, 
and to produce a state of helpless dependency upon 
authority. Moreover, it has encouraged the tendency 
of the young man to leave the farm, so that to-day 
farm-work in Germany is almost exclusively in the 
hands of women, and agriculture is in an alarmingly 
demoralized condition. Take the young peasant 
from the fields, dress him up in a uniform, show him 
cities, teach him to handle himself well, give him a 
glimpse of the opportunities and earnings of indus- 
trial pursuit, and it is hard enough, when his army 
service is finished, to drive him back to the plodding 
underpaid life on the land. As a result of this, and 
of the vast demand for workers in the factories, there 
has been a steady flow of men from the farms to the 



A View of the German Workingman i 17 

cities. In 1882, 42J per cent of the population was 
engaged in agriculture; in 1896, 14 years later, the 
number had been reduced to 36 per cent. Farm 
work has fallen almost wholly into the hands of 
women, and a decreased production of food stuffs in 
proportion to the population, with the necessity of 
importing food from abroad, has been responsible in 
large part for the increased prices of commodities. 
Indeed, the Agrarians, the land-owning lords, predict 
the ruin of agriculture, and are clamoring for protec- 
tion (which means the exclusion of foreign food stuffs), 
a demand which the government has not dared to ad- 
mit except in a very limited degree (like the practical 
exclusion of American meat) for fear that prices of 
foods will go so high as to cause serious disturbances 
among the industrial classes. 

Military service has also had its powerful in- 
fluence in continuing and confirming the low estate 
of womanhood in the empire. Half a million men 
constantly under arms, removed from wage-earning 
industries and receiving nothing from the govern- 
ment which employs them, make it necessary for 
just so many more women to work in the fields and 
at other labor of the most menial kinds. One sees 
them not only on the farms, but everywhere in the 
cities, passing brick, stirring mortar, sawing wood, 
digging ditches, loading lumber, and doing all man- 
ner of heavy labor. And yet the woman must bear 



I I 8 Seen in Germany 

children and take care of her home : the result is 
that many workingmen have little or no home life ; 
it is smothered out by toiling wives. Children are 
often left in charge of neighbors or in nurse homes 
and get little home training, — a condition which has 
certainly coarsened the moral fibre of the German. 
Infant mortality is very high in Germany ; in places 
it seems to a stranger as if every fourth child was 
bow-legged or at least weak in its legs. The Germans 
call this malady englische Krankheit (English sick- 
ness) ; why, one does n't quite see, for the disease is 
rare in England. It is due, as I have been informed, 
to lack of proper nourishment and to beer. The 
workingwomen of Germany number something over 
2,000,000. The empire could not do without their 
services, and yet the competition of so many cheap 
workers in the labor market tends to keep down 
wages, — a condition which has received much con- 
sideration by German thinkers. 

To an American observer nothing is more strik- 
ing than the attitude of the German government 
toward the working population of the empire. Its 
leaders, from the emperor down, are unequalled for 
the lively intelligence with which they recognize con- 
ditions and for the promptitude with which they act. 
It is perfectly plain to them that the hope of Germany 
lies with the manufactories ; therefore the industrial 
classes must be trained, protected, and encouraged. 



A View of the German Workingman i 19 

One who follows public discussion of the subject 
— for instance, in the Reichstag — is curiously 
impressed with the attitude of insensibility toward 
the individual desires or hopes of the workman. As 
a man he is not to be considered for an instant ; but 
as an implement to carve a way for Germany to 
industrial and commercial greatness, to colonies and 
a vast navy, he is very precious indeed. Every- 
thing is done, therefore, that can be done to make 
this implement keener, brighter, and more efficient. 
The individual is nothing, the workman everything. 
Hence the military service teaches the young man 
implicit obedience to authority, makes him a perfect 
servant in the hands of the great governing power, 
and teaches him to rely implicitly upon it. And 
during every moment of his subsequent life the 
workman treads a pathway plainly marked out for 
him by the infinitely numerous rules and regulations 
of the government. When a workman is born he 
must be baptized in a government church and obtain 
a government certificate, he must be confirmed to 
religion in a government church ; if he marries the 
same power issues the permission and stands sponsor 
for the ceremony, and when he dies he is buried 
under government supervision. He must not say 
what he thinks freely, as the Englishman relieves 
his mind in Hyde Park or the American assails- 
the administration from the political stump, for if he 



I20 



Seen in Germany 



talks too much about how he is being governed he 
is likely to be clapped in jail as a disturber of the 
peace. He may not even spend his money wholly 
as he pleases. Instead of allowing a man to have 




A Typical German Workman 

his wages and to do what he pleases with them, 
giving him the self-discipline of learning to save and 
plan against the rainy day, the German government 
says to its workman : " You must be frugal; whether 
you want to or not." Consequently tens of thou- 



A View of the German Workingman 121 

sands of workmen must buy little cards, paste stamps 
on them for every week, and turn them over to the 
police at the end of every year. These cards insure 
the workman against sickness and accident and re- 
lieve the wants of his old age, so that if anything 
befalls a workman, he does not become a charge on 
the state or on the employer (who, indeed, pays part 
of the premium for the insurance). This has made 
poverty almost unknown, and, considered from the 
point of view of a financial and governmental enter- 
prise, it has been vast and successful beyond praise. 
Indeed, one in every 20 persons in the empire has 
been supported at some time by these insurance 
funds. In 1897 there was a reserve fund of over 
^202,500,000, and the amount of insurance paid to 
the sick was over $26,000,000, to those who had 
suffered accidents over $15,000,000, and to the aged 
and feeble over $ 14,000,000. Moreover, there are 
many other aid and pension systems, both state and 
private, many workmen even being compelled to in- 
sure in a death fund so that their funeral expenses 
may be paid and they may be laid away in the little 
green cemetery with cast iron crosses perhaps con- 
taining their tintypes at the head of their graves. 

And so, year after year, the workman goes on 
sticking stamps, — and the police sees that he never 
fails in this respect, — having little responsibility for 
the future, or for the welfare of his family, knowing 



122 Seen in Germany 



that whatever happens the funds will support him. 
He depends absolutely upon the great, powerful, dim 
government above him to take care of him and shield 
him from harm. He is not especially interested in 
organizing trade unions, though sometimes he does 
indulge in the fury of a strike. He buys lottery 
tickets regularly from the lottery, which is also a 
government enterprise, and nearly all that is left 
goes for beer and cheap shows. Thus supported 
and relieved of all responsibility, is it any wonder 
that the German workman goes smooth-browed and 
simple-minded to his Sunday enjoyments? These 
enjoyments are all of the present, and of the senses, 
material, for he takes no thought of the morrow. 

If he does begin to consider his condition, he does 
one of two things, — he either becomes a socialist or 
he commits suicide. So socialism, though held down 
by bands of steel, is rampant everywhere in Germany. 
Even the emperor once, with characteristic frankness, 
said to his troops at Potsdam : 

" For you there is one foe, and that is my foe. 
Considering the existing socialistic difficulties, it may 
be necessary for me to command you to shoot down 
your own relatives, brothers, and parents, in the 
streets, which God forbid, but you must obey my 
orders without murmuring." 

And the extent of socialism, which has few means 
of public expression, every attempt at real free speech 



A View of the German Workingman 123 



in this regard being squelched without mercy, is 
probably not reaUzed even in Germany, though the 
sociaHsts now cast annually some million and a half 
of votes in the empire. 

As to the matter of suicides, Germany has long 
been known for its terrible records. Saxony has the 
highest rate of suicide of any country in the world. 
Barker gives its annual rate as 31.1 per 100,000 
inhabitants, and that of the entire empire as 14.3, 
compared with a rate in United States of only 3.5 
per 100,000, while England shows 6.9. About 
11,000 persons kill themselves every year in the 
German empire, and these belong chiefly to the 
working classes. 

The German method of dealing with the working 
classes is exactly opposite from the American way. 
In Germany it may be said that the tendency is to 
make better workmen ; in America and England the 
tendency is to make better men. The Anglo-Saxon 
policy is to " cast the bantling on the rock " and let 
him work out his own salvation through temptation. 
In Germany the policy is quite the reverse : the work- 
man is protected from disciplining temptation, and 
ruled in a thousand ways by the government, instead 
of being allowed to rule himself. American discipline 
is from within ; German from without. The German 
workman is without hope even in religion, for it is rare 
that a German male workman is ever seen in church 



I 24 Seen in Germany 

after confirmation ; there is little or no chance for him 
to rise ; he has before him no possible career in poli- 
tics, nor any hope of becoming a Carnegie, a Schwab, 
or a Huntington. Consequently he is without ambi- 
tion to do his work faster or by better methods ; he is 
content to do what his father did without thinking, 
though the all-seeing government is making hercu- 
lean efforts through its scores of technical and indus- 
trial schools, the best in the world, to stir him from 
his stolid and precedent-bound lethargy. The German 
workman is slow, therefore his wages are small. It 
is less expensive in Germany to hire muscle than 
it is to install expensive machinery. In all sorts 
of German manufacturing establishments one sees 
clouds of workmen bending their backs to burdens 
that in America are borne swiftly, noiselessly, and 
more cheaply by electricity or steam. 

Not only is the government doing its best to stir 
the workman to greater activity, but in several in- 
stances individuals are attacking the problem with 
energy and success. At Jena, I visited the famous 
Zeiss lens works, where an experiment of an eight- 
hour day is being tried, it being understood that the 
men shall study their tasks and increase the speed 
of work until they are able to do as much in eight 
hours as formerly in ten or eleven. The experiment 
is being conducted with great intelligence both by 
workers and proprietors. It must be said, however, 



A View of the German Workingman 125 

that they have much in their favor. The workmen 
are nearly all young and of the very highest class of 
intelligence, and the work done is exceedingly fatigu- 
ing to eyes and hands, so that weariness caused by a 
longer day's work tended to reduce the quantity and 
injure the quality of the product. I was informed by 
Director Fischer that so far as it had gone the experi- 
ment was a success. It is certain, however, that in 
a great majority of manufactories such an innovation 
as this would fail utterly, for the workmen are hope- 
lessly unambitious, conservative, and helpless ; they 
prefer to live the old, simple life, get what enjoy- 
ment they can and strive as little as they can. 

And yet, though the tendency is to do only those 
things for the workman which will make him a better 
implement for the service of the nation, there are 
a few philanthropists who are doing their best to 
make the workman's life more enjoyable and profit- 
able for his own sake. At Jena I visited a fine free 
reading room, which will ultimately be expanded into 
a library. It is the result of private enterprise and is 
said to be the best if not the only one of its kind in 
the empire. Heretofore workmen in Jena and nearly 
everywhere else have had to go to a beer garden or 
cafe to see the newspapers and other publications, 
and there are few opportunities for them to get books 
anywhere, even if they had time to read them. Cu- 
riously enough, workmen who read nearly always 



126 Seen in Germany 

choose science and philosophy, rarely fiction. The 
parks of Germany are everywhere fine and extensive, 
and though kept with little reference to the workmen, 
the workmen are at liberty to use them, which they 
do to a great extent. Free swimming baths have 
been established in the rivers near many cities, some- 
times by private means, oftener by the municipality. 
These are popular with the younger element of all 
classes. At Chemnitz, a large grim manufacturing 
city in Saxony, where there are immense factories tor 
hosiery, and machinery works, I visited a new free 
municipal bath. At Chemnitz one may see some of 
the bitterest phases of the life of the German worker, 
a hot bed of socialism, a place where lotteries, cheap 
circuses, and shooting festivals absorb every bit of 
the workman's surplus money and encourage dissipa- 
tion. Here, as in many other factory towns, one 
hears of mysterious and often desperate crimes, com- 
mitted in the face of a police surveillance unmatched 
in the world. The bath in question is most thor- 
oughly built, — everything in Germany is thoroughly 
done, — and is admirably adapted to its purpose. 
The bath house is a square, one-story brick building, 
situated in a city square within easy reach of all the 
factories. I visited it on a chilly Saturday afternoon, 
and I found the waiting lobbies packed with work- 
men. Most of them had come directly from the 
shops, black with grime and grease. Nearly all had 



1 



A View of the German Workingman i 27 

brought a newspaper roll containing clean shirts or 
other Sunday wear, although many were without any 
change of clothing. A few girls and women were 
waiting their turn in a separate room. 

In Germany nothing is ever given away, and I 
was quite prepared to hear that it cost ten pfennigs 
(about two and one half cents) to use the free bath. 
The fee, however, was intended, not so much as a 
charge as a sort of governor for the machinery. I 
presented my ten-pfennig piece and received a 
large, clean towel and a bit of yellow soap, together 
with a slip of paper bearing a number. Then I 
entered the waiting corridor and took my place on 
a long bench with the workmen. The walls were 
of marble, the doors of the baths were yellow var- 
nished wood, and everything about the place was 
as neat and clean as a New England kitchen. 

There were fourteen separate bath rooms, as I 
remember, on the men's side, and two on the women's 
side, A boy with a slate kept an account of each 
bath room. Every man was allowed to stay twenty 
minutes inside. My companions in waiting were 
all workingmen of the stolid German type, not 
unfamiliar in this country. Their work clothing 
was much poorer than that of the American work- 
man. They sat looking before them and saying 
almost nothing, not even evincing much interest 
when their numbers were called. I thought of a 



128 



Seen in Germany 



crowd of American workmen I had once seen under 
similar circumstances, and how they had joked one 
another and laughed and discussed all sorts of 




Public Bath House in Chemnitz 

questions. Some of these German workmen waited 
an hour or more for their turns, but not one of 
them had anything to read, and no attempt had 
been made to supply the waiting room with papers or 
reading matter of any description. But they seemed 



A View of the German Workingman 129 

to enjoy the baths, and the change when they came 
out was most marked. They looked Hke new men, 
and they evidently felt as they looked. 

At last my number was called. I entered a very 
small square room, having a bench at one side and 
hooks for clothing at the other. Opening from this 
was a still smaller alcove built solidly of marble 
with a grated floor. It was invitingly clean. There 
were hot and cold water faucets which regulated the 
fall of water from the shower above, and one was 
able to get a pleasant and satisfactory bath. 

I learned afterward that the towel and soap fee, 
small as it was, nearly paid the operating expenses 
of the bath, which was becoming weekly more popu- 
lar. Certainly there never was a more civilizing 
influence in such a town than a bath of this 
kind. 

One who realizes the mighty industrial progress 
of Germany is struck with the vital question as to 
whether the w^orkman will be able to keep pace. 
Surely the limit of his wages has nearly been reached ; 
he cannot at present earn more ; and the manufac- 
turers, who are crowded to narrow margins, between 
the fierce competition of the Americans and the 
British, cannot afford to pay more. But the popu- 
lation continues to expand, there being 12,000,000 
more people in Germany in 1898 than in 1870, and 
that almost without immigration ; foods and rents are 

9 



130 Seen in Germany 

going up continually ; the government is demanding 
always more and more for its army, its navy, and 
its colonies. When will the danger line be reached ? 
Will the German toiler plod always onward, working 
always for continually diminishing profits, drinking 
his Sunday beer, forever the model of patience 
and simple enjoyment of life ? 



^1 

1 



V 
A GERMAN PROFESSOR 



1 



V 
A GERMAN PROFESSOR 

Professor Ernst Haeckel of Jena 

THE German professor occupies a large share 
in the activities of German life ; indeed, a 
peculiar distinction attaches to him the 
world over. Were it not for him Germanv 
would never have reached her present high place 
among the nations, either intellectually, industrially, 
or commercially. Delve into the history of many of the 
greatest business enterprises of the empire — for in- 
stance, the sugar beet or the coal tar industries — and 
you will find a quiet, plodding, painstaking, preoc- 
cupied German professor ; and if you seek for the 
causes for the astonishing perfection and economy 
with which many German factories are to-day oper- 
ated, you will find a German professor with a staff 
of scientists working side by side with the men who 
operate the machinery, keep the books, and sell the 
completed products. The German professor is a man 
simple in his habits and tastes, a hard worker, a 
cheerful enthusiast, often impractical, sometimes 
visionary, with an infinite capacity for taking pains. 



134 Seen in Germany 

and in the long run of getting results. Nowhere 
in the world is scholarship, especially scientific scholar- 
ship, honored as it is in Germany ; with the great- 
est solicitude the government nurtures it^ promising 
young doctors, giving them chairs in the universi- 
ties, in the technical schools, or in other State 
institutions, where, relieved from all financial care 
and insured of a place for life, the young man may 
devote every energy to the work of his heart. And 
if he rises, if he makes some great discovery, he 
is honored in a manner unknown outside of the 
Fatherland. The very title " Professor " is instinct 
with honor. In America any man, poor or rich, 
ignorant or learned, corn-doctor or savant, may ap- 
pend " Professor'* to his name, and no one shall say 
him nay nor give him the greater honor. But in 
Germany the title of professor is conferred on a man 
by the government and carries with it a fixed social 
position and dignity like that of admiral or general. 

And of all the distinguished company of German 
professors and German scientists none is better 
known the world over than Professor Ernst Haeckel 
of the University of Jena. What Huxley did to 
establish Darwinism in England, Haeckel has done 
on the Continent. Haeckel has been called the 
German Huxley, as Huxley was called the English 
Haeckel. He and the distinguished codiscoverer 
of the theory of development, A. R. Wallace of Eng- 



A German Professor 135 

land, are the last of the great militant evolutionists. 
He has lived to see the beliefs for which he fought 
so strenuously forty years ago become the firmly es- 
tablished foundation of natural science, to see the 
theory of progressive development applied in ways 
of which Darwin perhaps never dreamed, to see it 
spread from biology until it has covered nearly the 
whole range of human knowledge. Forty years ago 
Haeckel was one of the few thinkers of Europe who 
supported the theories set forth in '^ that extravagant 
book," the " Origin of Species." Now any boy 
of the schools will tell glibly how man got his ears 
and why the fine hair of his forearm curves upward 
instead of downward* 

In June, 1900, I visited Professor Haeckel at his 
home in Jena, where he has lived hemmed in by his 
books during most of the active years of his life. He 
comes upon one as a great and genial presence — a 
man of robust build, both erect and strong, with a 
thick white beard and keen blue eyes set about with 
wrinkles of humor. The shake of his hand is warm, 
and his voice is full and hearty. As you see him 
among the trees of his garden he wears a broad- 
brimmed black hat with a dome-like crown. He 
calls it his " Creation Hat," and he tells you that 
two just like it are sent to him every year by a man 
whom he has never seen, but who admires his " Nat- 
ural History of Creation." He has, indeed, a quaint 



136 Seen in Germany 

story for everything : as he opens the cabinets in his 
museum he introduces a big chimpanzee as your 
nearest relative, and then he goes on to show you 
why the chimpanzee is more closely related to man 
than the baboon or the orang-outang. He remembers 
how he came by the baby chimpanzee in the next 
case. It had belonged to a travelling menagerie, 
and, as he informs you, it had agreeably chosen to 
die just as the menagerie was coming into Jena. 

" It is not often that a professor of zoology has 
such a fine chimpanzee die at his front door," he 
says. 

Presently he shows you a collection of pictures, 
from exquisite engravings on stone which are to form 
a part of his new work, " Art Forms of Nature." 
They are pictures of the lower forms of animal life, 
medusae, radiolaria, corals, sponges, and many other 
forms, and both in drawing and in coloring they are 
superb. You learn that he himself is the artist who 
has produced this work, making the drawings and 
coloring them with his own hand. You suggest how 
admirably some of these forms of life might be used 
by an artist for unique and beautiful decorative 
effects. Instantly he points to the ceiling of his 
study, and there, painted true to color, is a huge 
likeness of that delicately beautiful creature of the 
sea, the medusa. 

" I have often suggested the use of these forms of 



I 










^ 



138 Seen in Germany 

life for decorative effects," he says ; " the artist must 
always go back to nature for his best motives." 

Professor Haeckel's study is a homely, quiet room 
upstairs in the Zoological Institute of Jena. A table 
in the centre is crowded with mounted animals. As 
Professor Haeckel talks with you, his hand rests on 
a curious specimen of trunk fish from the Mediter- 
ranean Sea. At his elbow stands a big black ape 
with its skeleton counterpart, and at one side there 
is a fine specimen of that most rare and interesting 
animal, the duckbill, — the mammal that lays eggs, 
which has' been of such value as evidence to com- 
parative zoologists. Over his desk in the corner 
there are pictures of Darwin and of Johannes Miiller, 
the latter being the leading German zoologist in the 
first half of the nineteenth century. These two men, 
with Professor Gegenbaur, who preceded Haeckel 
in the chair of zoology at Jena, may be said to have 
shaped Haeckel's career. It was the " Origin of 
Species," read at a time of doubt and indecision, 
that inspired the young Haeckel to his life-work ; it 
was Miiller who schooled him in the new way of 
studying nature. Some one has said of Miiller : 
" To him every look into a microscope was a ser- 
vice to God." His way of learning nature's secrets 
was to go directly to nature. The best of his life 
was spent in the fields and on the seashore watching 
things as they grew. 



A German Professor 139 

"If once you begin studying this magical world of 
the ocean," he once said to Haeckel, " you will see 
that you cannot be rid of it." 

And thus it was that Haeckel, freshly convinced 
of the theory of evolution, which indeed he had seen 
foreshadowed in Goethe, began the minute study of 
the radiolaria, sponges, corals, and medusas which 
was afterwards to yield such rich fruit in estab- 
lishing the truth of Darwinism. Of a statue bust 
of Miiller Haeckel says : 

" Sometimes if I am wearying of work I have only 
to look at it to win fresh force." 

Everywhere about Haeckel's workroom are books, 
books in German, English, French, Italian, Russian 
— one of the most complete of libraries on Darwin- 
ism. Professor Haeckel speaks and reads English 
and Italian almost as easily as he does German, and 
he is also conversant with French and the Scandina- 
vian tongue. His own books and their different 
translations and editions fill a good-sized case. One 
is at a loss to understand how one man could pos- 
sibly have done so much writing in addition to such 
a cloud of other work. Here is his first great work, 
the " General Morphology of Organisms," in two 
thick volumes published seven years after the "Origin 
of Species." It was written at fever heat to drown 
the sorrow over the loss of his first wife, — a sorrow 
which nearly overcame him. He worked so hard at it 



140 Seen in Germany 

that it left him broken in health, and, after all, it was 
so much in advance of the thought of the day that it 
made little general impression although it won him, 
perhaps, a more valuable reward in the friendship of 
Darwin and Huxley. But the book to-day cannot 
be obtained for many times its original price. In 
this library also is Haeckel's greatest popular work, 
"The Natural History of Creation," which has been 
translated into twelve languages, reaching its fourth 
edition in English. It is a wonderfully illuminative 
and conclusive book to one who would understand 
the theory of development as applied to the descent 
of man from the lower forms of animal life, and this 
in the face of the fact that many people will not agree 
with Professor Haeckel in his conclusions as to reli- 
gious faith. Then there are his monumental works 
on the radiolaria, on the sponges and corals, on the 
medusae and siphonophorae, the five huge volumes of 
reports on the " Challenger" expedition, and his new 
(1896) "Systematic Phylogeny," which he regards as 
his last and most important contribution to science. 
It comprehends in three volumes on an immense scale 
a systematic arrangement of the vegetable and animal 
worlds, living and extinct, on the basis of the theory 
of evolution, with man at the top and with the low- 
est, non-nucleated cell at the bottom. Haeckel has 
written a book ot travel, relating his experiences in 
a voyage to Ceylon — a fascinating book it is too, 




Haeckel at his Microscope 



142 Seen in Germany 

and of such popular interest that it has had two 
translations into English and has run through a 
paper-covered edition in America. His last book, 
the " Die Weltrathsel " (World-Riddles), which ap- 
peared in 1899, has had an unusual sale for a book 
of science. In its German edition it is a thick 
octavo volume of several hundred pages, and yet it 
was written complete in two months. Professor 
Haeckel's methods of writing this volume will per- 
haps explain why he has been able to accomplish so 
much. During all of the two months while he was 
at work he reached his desk at six o'clock every 
morning, and he wrote steadily, with a short inter- 
mission for dinner, until eight o'clock in the evening. 
During that time he was secluded in his laboratory, 
he wrote no letters and saw no visitors, it being 
understood that he was on a vacation in Italy. 

" One can accomplish much in forty years,*' he 
says. 

Another thing that impresses one who comes to 
know Professor Haeckel is the amount of work which 
he does with his own hands. His writing is all done 
by pen ; most of the pictures in his books are the 
work of his own brush and pencil ; his collections of 
sea creatures, numbering many thousands, have been 
made largely by his own hand ; and often he has 
done the preserving and mounting, even writing the 
labels himself When he travels — and he has been 



A German Professor 143 

half the world over — he travels alone, believing that 
he can thus accomplish more work. 

" I am not a friend of many assistants," he says. 

There can be no doubt that Haeckel's surround- 
ings have contributed much to the volume as well 
as to the high quality of his accomplishment. If 
there ever was an ideal spot for the unhampered 
work of a student and thinker, that spot is Jena, a 
small, quiet, quaint town, removed from the great 
highways of traffic and shut in from the world with 
splendid green hills. Professor Haeckel takes you 
to the window of his study — a view unsurpassed. 
In the distance rises a spur of mountain where the 
castle of a mediaeval baron once stood, and nearer at 
hand, hemming in the laboratory itself, there is a 
beautiful garden which excludes all but glimpses of 
the town. A pear tree just in front of the window 
is heavy with white blossoms and busy with bees ; 
just beyond it there is a rustic arbor, shaded from the 
sun. When Professor Haeckel leaves his work he 
goes out through a quiet lane walled in with foliage, 
and a few steps brings him to Ernst Haeckel Street, 
— so named in his honor by the citizens of Jena, — 
and then to his house on the hill, also set among 
abounding foliage. The shady lane which is his 
daily walk is a historic spot in Jena. A hundred 
years ago here walked Goethe and Schiller arm in 
arm, going out from Schiller's house, which one sees 



144 



Seen in Germany 



from the window of Professor HaeckeFs laboratory. 
And here is the bench on which they sat and here 
the stone table; the inscription above will tell about 
it in Goethe's own words (to Eckermann) : " At 




Schiller' s Lmie, Jena 

this old stone table have we two often eaten and 
exchanged good and great words." Here in this 
garden, also, Schiller wrote his " Wallenstein," in 
1798. And a more peaceful spot there is nowhere 



A German Professor 145 

in the world than this garden on a sunny June 
morning. Goethe saw in imagination the great 
scheme of life, the developing process of nature, 
when Darwin was a mere boy ; and were it not for 
his fame as a poet he might still be famous for his 
daring scientific speculations. It is one of those 
curiously interesting things that Haeckel should 
have come to work out the great theory of evolution 
in the spot where Goethe dreamed it, even using 
some of the same instruments which Goethe had 
used in his investigations half a century or more 
before. In all of his books Haeckel mentions 
Goethe constantly : he has been a deep student of 
Goethe's poetry, and it is possible that it is Goethe's 
influence that fired the scientific imagination which 
has given Haeckel's work its greatest claims to 
recognition. 

Not content with showing the magnificent view 
from his windows, Haeckel will take you up to the 
roof. He goes up two steps at a time, although 
he is now past sixty-six years old. 

Away back when he was a student in the uni- 
versity he won fame as an athlete at the famous 
"Turnfest" at Leipzig in 1863, earning a crown 
of laurel for breaking the record for the running 
broad jump. And the vigor of his younger man- 
hood has never deserted him. 

On the roof one may see the country for miles in 



10 



146 Seen in Germany 

every direction — magnificent mountain spurs and 
green valleys, each with its little stream, and each 
with a clustering hamlet of red-tiled houses. Pro- 
fessor Haeckel tells you that the country is rich in 
orchids, and that the cliffs, besides being beautiful, 
are most interesting geologically. Attempts have 
been made a number of times to tempt Haeckel 
away from Jena by offers of more important and 
much better paid places — by the Universities of 
Vienna, Wiirzburg, Strasburg, and Bonn, but he 
will not leave these perfect surroundings. 

In addition to his original researches in science, 
his writing, his lecturing, and university work, which 
is considerable, one is astonished by the genius 
Haeckel has expended in avocations, albeit strenuous 
avocations. At his home he has over two thou- 
sand paintings, mostly water colors, some of them 
of considerable size, besides other thousands of 
sketches in ink, crayon, and pencil. These do not 
include his scientific studies of microscopic and other 
forms of life, which have been used in his books. 
Among them there are landscapes, and figure scenes 
painted in Ceylon and India, ruins in Rome, ice- 
bergs and mountain scenery in Norway, beautiful 
sea pictures in Corsica and the Canary Islands, 
and desert scenery in Africa. Professor Haeckel 
showed me over sixty of these paintings made in 
Corsica last year. This work has been done for 



A German Professor 



147 



the pure pleasure It has brought; but Haeckel 
thinks it has had greater influence in sharpen- 
ing his powers of observation, of making him a 
good seer, for without observing closely and care- 
fully one cannot reproduce accurately in drawing or 
color. Going over these pictures, one could not help 
being impressed with the boundless enthusiasm and 
joy of life that still remained to this young-old man. 
What keen pleasure the mountains and the ocean 
had given him as he painted ; how interested he was 
in this curious rock formation, or that splendid 
clump of palms ! One reading his book on Ceylon 
feels this same spirit of almost boyish delight in 
every happening and mishappening of the voyage. 
It is an admirable tonic for one who no longer sees 
how good the world is. 

Years ago, Haeckel tells you. It was his ambition 
to be a traveler, to see every part of the world, — 
a scientific traveler, who should make his discov- 
eries of value, but his father preferred to have him a 
doctor. So he studied at Wurzburg and Berlin, and 
presently was graduated and began practising in 
Berlin. He relates that In the first year he had 
three patients all told, but that might have been be- 
cause he gave the hours of consultation on his plate 
as from Rvq to six in the morning. When he found 
that he could not be a traveler, he was fired for a 
time with the ambition to be a painter, and all the 



148 Seen in Germany 

while he was worknig prodigiously along scientific 
lines with Miiller and others. But the " travel 
bacillus," as he calls it, was ever active within him, 
and years later he was able to make many of the 
voyages of which he had dreamed in his youth. In- 
deed, at the time of my visit to Jena, Haeckel was 
preparing for another voyage to Java and the Celebes. 
Ever since Dr. Eugene Dubois's discovery in Java 
of the remains of that curious ape-man, the Pithe- 
canthropus erectus, which has been called the " Miss- 
ing Link," Professor Haeckel had especially desired 
to visit again this cradle of the human race. His 
chief object was not to seek for other remains of 
these first men, and yet he hoped to return with 
much new scientific material. I asked him if he was 
not afraid of fever in these tropical countries. 

" I never have had a touch of it," he said ; " I 
attribute this to the fact that I am not much of a 
believer in alcohoHc stimulants. Foreigners in those 
countries usually over-drink and over-eat." 

Haeckel's great service to science has been in ex- 
tending and applying the theory of evolution. In 
his "On the Origin of Species" Darwin had merely 
intimated his belief that man himself might also be 
the result of an evolution from lower forms, but this 
speculation was so extraordinary that it was left out 
of the German translations which fell into Haeckel's 
hands. Haeckel's ready scientific imagination, how- 




Professor Ernst Haeckel, dra^n from life by George Varian 



150 Seen in Germany 

ever, supplied this deficiency and he at once began his 
efforts to prove the descent of man. He was the first 
to outUne the pedigrees of the higher animals, showing 
the development of each and filling in the " missing 
links" with fossil forms wherever possible, and where 
impossible suggesting hypothetical forms, and thus 
he was able to construct an ancestral tree beginning 
with the simple non-nucleated cell, and reaching 
upward to man. It was he who first discovered the 
beginnings of life, minute masses of living matter, 
or protoplasm, without form and without nucleus. 
To this he gave the name monera, and he showed 
how it developed into the higher form of cell repre- 
sented by the egg. cell, having a nucleus, or germ. 
Many of the terms now in familiar use in zoology, 
such as phylum, ontogeny, phylogeny, gastrula, 
metazoa, acrania, coeloma, gonades, were invented by 
Haeckel to suit the necessity of his great classifica- 
tion schemes. It was Haeckel, also, who first brought 
out strongly the embryological proofs of the theory 
of development, giving rise to what is known as 
Haeckel's " fundamental biognetic law." According 
to this law every living man is a condensed recapitu- 
lation of the whole story of creation. He begins a 
single cell just as the earth's first living creature began 
with the monera and simple unicellular protista, and 
he develops swiftly through all the stages of life, just 
as the race has developed through millions of years. 



A German Professor i 5 1 

Nothing could be of greater scientific importance 
than the working out of this profoundly wonderful 
parallelism between the development of the individual 
and the development of the race. By means of it 
Professor Haeckel was able to solve many of the 
difficulties which lay in the path of the application 
of Darwin's theory and to supply many missing 
links. His work along these lines is admirably set 
forth in "The Natural History of Creation." The 
tracing and comparison of the embryonic develop- 
ment of man, whom he calls a " peculiar two-legged 
mammal," with the development of the lowest forms 
of animal life, like sponges and the radiolaria, involved 
an immense amount of the most difficult original re- 
search. In the course of this work he discovered, 
named, and described many thousands of new species 
of the lower forms of animal life, giving them nearly 
all Greek names. In 1868, nine years after the 
appearance of Darwin's great book, he published 
" On the Development of the Human Race," and 
since that time he has been the most indefatigable 
of workers in completing and correcting the pedigree 
of mankind. He believes now that the story is 
complete. Other facts may be added, but they 
will be details, not essential to what may be called the 
plot of the story. 

I asked Professor Haeckel what, in his opinion, 
would be the next stages of development in mankindo 



152 Seen in Germany 

" It will be mostly mental, the evolution of a 
better and finer brain," he said ; " when man's brain 
began to develop rapidly there was no further need 
for great changes in his body. And yet some physi- 
cal changes are still going on. Man will probably 
lose some of his teeth, there being not the use for 
them that there was, and there are signs that the little 
toes will also disappear, leaving man a four-toed 
animal. But these changes are of small significance 
compared with our mental development." 

There are, however, as Professor Haeckel points 
out, tremendous influences at work in developing 
mankind — a vast and fascinating field of study. 
Man being a product of natural evolution and de- 
velopment, his institutions must necessarily be a like 
product, and the application of the theory to political 
and social economy, statecraft and education, are most 
hopeful fields of work for future thinkers. 

" Life was never more complex than it is to-day," 
said Professor Haeckel, ''and there is no prophesy- 
ing the exact lines of future development. Man at 
present seems to be developing or retrograding in 
masses — by nations, and yet under very different 
influences. Here in Germany the tendency is all 
toward the centralization of power in the govern- 
ment, the removal of individual responsibility, and 
the working together of large masses of men as one 
man. In America the tendency has been different : 



A German Professor 



153 



there the individual is developed, he has great powers 
and responsibilities — the man is the unit. Who shall 
say how these great influences will work out ? " 

Speaking at another time of the beautiful and 




Professor Haeckel lecturing in his Class Room 

accurate pictures of animals and plants now obtain- 
able where thirty years ago there were almost none, 
Professor Haeckel mentioned this as an instance 
of one of the lesser and yet important influences of 
modern life. Pictures convey ideas swiftly and accu- 



154 Seen in Germany 

rately, therefore they serve as a new and powerful 
factor in education — scientific education in particu- 
lar. A man may become comparatively familiar 
with the animal forms ot the world in a short time, 
through the perfect pictures now obtainable, whereas 
a few years ago it would have taken a lifetime. 

Then there are other influences to which Professor 
Haeckel has often called attention. In Europe there 
is the influence of what Haeckel calls military selec- 
tion — all the young men being taken at a certain 
age, removed from productive labor or study, and 
put through exactly similar training for one or two 
years. In America there is no such influence. How 
will such training or lack of it develop the race ? 
Haeckel also speaks of medical selection as one of 
the powerful modern influences. Medical science 
has made great strides in the past few years : it saves 
many lives that otherwise would have been lost and 
frequently it keeps people with dangerous diseases 
alive for years. This must necessarily swell the 
population largely, the crowding bringing with it 
new influences. Professor Haeckel also sees other 
problems in the medical preservation of the weak. 

Then there is a still more powerful influence at 
work : the earth is now almost wholly inhabited ; 
there are few new places for immigration and the 
development of virgin land — the two influences 
which have had so great a share in the progress 



A German Professor 



^55 



of the world during the last few hundred years. 
The contest must now change. Instead of dis- 
covering and settling new continents, there must 
set in a terrible new struggle for existence between 
the older nations, for instance, in commerce and 
trade, and the strongest, most easily adaptable, most 
resourceful nations will win. Professor Haeckel 
spoke of the remarkable retrogression of the Latin 
races during the past few decades as a striking in- 
stance of this new struggle — especially the retro- 
gression of once powerful Spain. He also called 
attention to the sudden upward progress of Japan. 
It is as ever the struggle between the species for 
existence, and the sharper the struggle within certain 
limits, the greater the development of the strong. 

I asked Professor Haeckel what in his opinion 
were the next great avenues of development in scien- 
tific research. 

" I believe," he said, "that the nineteenth century 
has been the golden era of science — that there will 
never again be so many discoveries of profound 
importance." 

Indeed, he is of the opinion that there are no more 
great universal generalizations to be made — like the 
law of the conservation of energy, the attraction of 
gravitation, and the theory of natural evolution. He 
thinks the work of future scientists will deal largely 
with the application of the great principles and gen- 



156 Seen in Germany 

erallzations already well known. By this he does not 
mean that wonderful new scientific discoveries will 
not be made, but that they will not have the pro- 
found importance of these fundamental laws. 

'' I look for the greatest future development in the 
science of chemistry," he said. He spoke of the 
attempts now being made to show that the seventy 
or more so-called elementary substances may in 
reality be only the forms of a few still more ele- 
mentary substances, mentioning the speculation that 
science would one day find that there was really only 
one substance at the basis of all things — one ele- 
ment of which the so-called seventy odd elements are 
merely forms of different composition of atoms. 

The conversation as to the outlook in chemistry 
drifted naturally to that subject which has so often 
presented itself to the imaginative scientist — that of 
the ability of men to produce a living substance by 
artificial processes, in other words, to make life. 
Haeckel believes firmly that some day this will be 
done, that it is not at all beyond the range of science, 
strange and improbable as it may seem. We had 
been sitting at the open windows of Haeckel's study. 
The professor pointed outside to the beautiful green 
foliage of the garden. 

" It is only what those plants are doing all the 
time," he said, " taking so many parts of carbon, 
hydrogen, nitrogen, oxygen, and so on, and combining 



A German Professor i57 

them into the albuminous substance which we call 
protoplasm, the living substance. Science can com- 
bine these elements just as nature does — the propor- 
tions being exactly known — but not yet to produce 
life. The albumen molecule is very complicated. 
Science does not know yet just how the various 
atoms of carbon, oxygen, and so on which compose 
it are united, and all attempts to solve the problem 
of the albumen molecule, what it really is and how 
the elements are joined within it, have been so far 
without avail. But I believe firmly that this great 
question will some day be solved. If it is, then the 
artificial production of life will be a possibility." 



VI 

A TYPICAL SCIENTIFIC INSTITUTION 



VI 

A TYPICAL SCIENTIFIC INSTITUTION 

The Physical and Technical Institute at 
Charlottenburg 

SUCH a government as that of Germany im- 
poses restrictions and assumes paternal re- 
sponsibilities quite out of keeping with the 
American idea of the functions of the state^ but 
it also goes as far in the other direction, and showers 
benefits upon its favored institutions with paternal 
prodigality. The republic says to its citizen, " You 
may do what you please, but don't bother me.'* 
The monarchy's familiar word is verboten (forbid- 
den), but the monarchy also says, " If you have talent 
and ambition with poverty, I will support you so 
that your work may help me." And that is one 
of the prime reasons why Germany to-day holds 
such a commanding position in science and art, and 
it accounts in large measure for the recent astonish- 
ing development in German commerce. 

The casual American visitor may not at first 
appreciate this liberal side of the German system, 
and such an institution as the Reichsanstalt, the 



II 



1 62 Seen in Germany 

Imperial Physical and Technical Institute of Ger- 
many, strikes him with astonishment. Here is a 
splendid establishment of buildings, set in spa- 
cious grounds, an equipment of its kind, perhaps 
without parallel anywhere in the world, having a 
faculty of ninety-five professors, scientific assistants, 
expert mechanicians, and other helpers, a staff larger 
than that of many an American university, and yet 
without a single student or any provision for stu- 
dents, and admitting visitors only rarely. And this 
institution has for its purpose, primarilv, the investi- 
gation of abstruse scientific problems, those problems 
of heat, light, electricity, and magnetism, which lie 
just beyond the borders of the known. Much of this 
work offers little promise of what we in America are 
fond of calling immediate practical results, and yet 
the inquiries are in reality profoundly practical, inas- 
much as they are laying a deep and solid foundation 
for future scientific discovery. This is the physical 
side of the Reichsanstalt. A coordinate department, 
that of technics, seeks to adapt the results of these 
special researches and to accomplish for adv^anced 
mechanics what the physical department is doing for 
advanced science. 

Here in the Reichsanstalt are set up the most per- 
fect instruments in the world for measuring heat and 
cold, for finding the pressure of the atmosphere, for 
determining the strength of electric currents, for 



A Typical Scientific Institution 163 

measuring light, and for a score of other purposes in 
which the utmost exactness is required. Here are kept 
the purest gold, silver, platinum, iridium, rhodium, 
and other metals in the world — the standards of 
purity. Here is the purest water in the world, and 
the finest glass, and the most perfect weighing ma- 
chines. Here can be produced and measured every 
temperature from that of liquid air to that of the 
electric arc light. And here is apparatus for generat- 
ing electric currents of any potential from one volt 
up to twelve thousand volts, and, what is more, of 
measuring them with almost absolute exactness. Does 
the famous German thermometer-maker wish to know 
if his thermometers or his barometers are absolutely 
correct? He sends them to the Reichsanstalt for test- 
ing. When Krupp, the gun-builder of Essen, devises 
a new kind of nickel-steel he sends it to the Reich- 
sanstalt to ascertain exactly its coefficient of expansion 
in varying degrees of heat and cold, its electrical con- 
ductivity, and its tensile strength. When our own 
government wishes to be certain that the incandes- 
cent electric lights which it is purchasing are marked 
with the proper candle-power, it must needs send them 
to this distant German institution for testing ; there 
is, perhaps, no other place in the world where it 
can be done with such certainty. Such a consign- 
ment of American lamps had just passed through 
the Reichsanstalt at the time of my visit. The pitch 



164 Seen in Germany 

of the music which you hear at the opera has un- 
doubtedly been regulated by tuning forks bearing 
the peculiar blue marking of the Reichsanstalt ; the 
thermometer with which your physician takes your 
temperature when you are ill, if it be of the best 
make, owes its accuracy to the same source. 

The Reichsanstalt has now been in existence for 
twelve years, and yet it is rarely heard of even in 
Germany outside of a limited circle of scientific in- 
vestigators and technicians, but among these it stands 
supreme: it is the final authority. It is probable 
that all the people of the United States, outside of a 
few colleges and manufacturing establishments, who 
ever heard of the institution could be numbered 
within a few hundreds. 

All of this work is expensive, its returns in money 
being a very small fraction, less than ten per cent, 
of its income, and yet the Imperial Reichstag of Ger- 
many makes the necessary appropriations year after 
year for its extension and maintenance, nor is there 
any objection because much of the work has no 
immediate practical value, nor because it benefits 
not only Germany but the whole world. For the 
results of the investigations and determinations at 
the Reichsanstalt are freely published, and whoever 
wishes, be he American, English, or French, political 
friend or foe, may use them all. In this large and 
liberal attitude toward science and the recognition 



A Typical Scientific Institution 165 

of its value to the state, Germany must certainly be 
accorded the chief place among the nations. And 
this is what impresses the American, whose expe- 
rience with government has too often been associated 
with the intensely practical, no money spent unless 
the legislator can see practical results before the next 
campaign. 

The Reichsanstalt owes its existence to the far- 
sightedness of those two great Germans, von Siemens 
and von Helmholtz. Both men were, first of all, scien- 
tists, but Siemens, one of the greatest of inventors and 
manufacturers of electrical apparatus, was also a tech- 
nician. He recognized the necessity of greater exact- 
ness in all departments of mechanics, in standards of 
measurement in temperature, electricity, and light. 
He also saw in a broad way that the future of Germany 
lay in her progress as a manufacturing nation, and 
he knew that greater exactness in technical processes 
would not only mean greater speed and accuracy of 
production with the consequent increase in profits^ 
but he foresaw the advantages which would accrue 
to the nation which stood for perfection in manufac- 
tured articles. " Made in Germany " has now 
become a commercial by-word. In order to further 
this idea, Siemens presented the imperial govern- 
ment with a plot of land valued at $125,000 in the 
town of Charlottenburg which adjoins Berlin on 
the west. It is only a half hour's drive from the 



1 66 Seen in Germany 

emperor's palace, and within sight of that other 
unequalled German institution, the Royal Technical 
High School. To this plot the government added 
extensively by purchase and within three years' time 
nine buildings had risen out of the sand. The 
original cost of the establishment, exclusive of land, 
was over ^1,000,000, all paid by the imperial govern- 
ment. Von Helmholtz, then the most distinguished 
among German scientists, was called to the presidency 
of the institution ; and it was he with his immediate 
successor, Professor Kohlrausch, now president of 
the institution, who organized the work and first in- 
dicated the lines of research which it was to follow. 
Every attention was given to the details of construc- 
tion, so that the various buildings and the apparatus 
should be perfectly fitted to the purposes of accurate 
investigation. Money was not stinted, and it is 
probable that no other institution in the world is 
so thoroughly equipped. For delicate experiments 
in physics, great solidity of construction is required. 
Therefore the two main buildings were sunk deep 
in the earth and set on a firm foundation of stone 
and asphalt, so that an earthquake would hardly jar 
them. An even temperature is another requirement 
for delicate experiments, especially in the domain of 
temperature. Therefore the walls were built thick 
and solid. I was shown the method of construction 
in the basement of the physical building, first an outer 










^ 



s 

oq 



Q< 



^ 



O 



i68 Seen in Germany 

wall eighteen inches thick, pierced with tight-fitting 
double windows, then an air space reaching from 
floor to ceiling and wide enough for a man to walk 
in, then an inner wall of solid masonry two and one- 
half feet thick, also fitted with tight double windows 
and doors. Still inside of this there are rooms en- 
closed in masonry walls and having thick glass floors 
and ceilings, glass being the best heat insulator. These 
rooms are not artificially heated, and yet they can be 
kept at a temperature that will not vary winter or 
summer throughout the year more than two degrees. 
Each room has its own ventilator to carry ofi^ stenches 
and acid fumes, so that in no case can one experiment 
interfere with another. All the larger rooms are so 
fitted with extra doors, windows, heating radiators, and 
lighting apparatus that they can be divided into two 
or more smaller rooms should extra places be needed 
for peculiarly delicate experiments. An architect, 
two masons, and two carpenters are kept especially 
employed by the year for making these changes and 
for building the foundation pillars and other conven- 
iences for the experiments. Instead of shingle or 
tile roofs which might absorb heat, the buildings 
of the Reichsanstalt are covered with a thick layer 
of soil, now thoroughly grown up to turf. When I 
first saw the institution, the grass on the roofs was 
just turning green and a few dandelions shone out 
in yellow patches. One small building near the 



A Typical Scientific Institution 169 

middle of the grounds seemed at first sight out of 
harmony with the remainder of the institution. It 
is set diagonally to the front of the grounds, so that 
it may rest in the magnetic meridian, and it is built 
wholly without iron or steel in any form, — no iron 
nails, hinges, locks, pipes, or anything else of the 
kind. Here the professors may come when they 
are working with delicate experiments in magnetism, 
and all the conditions are propitious. All the build- 
ings give the impression of spaciousness and perma- 
nency, and standing, as they do, in the midst of a 
garden and trees, and shut off from the life of the 
surrounding streets, they furnish an ideal condition 
of seclusion and quiet. 

Nor has the effort of the government to furnish 
its chosen scientists with every working convenience 
been bounded by the limits of the Reichsanstalt 
grounds. Recently the street railways of Berlin 
have been fitting their lines with electricity. The 
directors of the Reichsanstalt feared that the prox- 
imity of trolley wires with the magnetic field which 
would be set up at the passage of every car might 
interfere with their experiments, and they made rep- 
resentations to that effect to the government. In 
Germanv science is esteemed only second to royalty, 
and the government being all-powerful, the street 
railroads were ordered not to place any trolley wires 
within a kilometer (five-eighths of a mile) of the 



170 Seen in Germany 

Reichsanstalt. As a result and odd enough it is to 
an American, the trolley lines of Charlottenburg when 
they approach the imperial mausoleum, the emper- 
or's memorial church, and the Reichsanstalt — royalty 
and science — are run underground, and the cars are 
compelled to cover the intervals by means of power 
drawn from storage batteries. Asphalt pavements 
also have replaced the old cobblestones in the streets 
around the Reichsanstalt, to prevent the jar of trucks 
from influencing the delicate instruments in the build- 
ings. To such an extent as this does Germany work 
out her schemes for scientific advancement. 

In these favorable surroundings the imperial gov- 
ernment has placed a corps of scientists of the highest 
attainments. In this, as in everything else, no pains 
have been spared to make every condition favorable to 
great accomplishment. The process of selection of 
men is, like everything in Germany, methodical and 
permanent. A student in the university has obtained 
his degree of doctor with credit, and he wishes to 
spend his life in science. The government, upon 
consideration, places him in the Reichsanstalt as a 
wissenschaftlichen — scientific assistant. He takes an 
oath of office and becomes at once a cog in the vast 
machine of the German imperial government. In 
about three years' time he is promoted to assistant 
with a small increase in salary. Then he serves eight 
or ten years, more or less, before he receives the 



A Typical Scientific Institution 171 

highly honorable title of professor — a distinction 
conferred by the government just as a colonel would 
be commissioned in the army. He is now a life 
member of the government service, and nothing but 
absolute disgrace ever displaces him. He is free 
to pursue the work he loves without the care and 
precariousness of a teaching position. His salary is 
very small, it is true, very small indeed, but from 
time to time he receives an increase of a few dollars a 
year, and, more astonishing to an American, the gov- 
ernment regularly pays him his salary three months in 
advance. At sixty-five years of age he may retire, 
and his pension will keep him comfortably to the end 
of his days. But if his salary is small his position 
in the government carries with it compensation in 
the form of social distinction which would be much 
beyond his reach if he were in a position in private 
life yielding him a much greater income. So the 
service is eminently safe and conducive to the care- 
ful, painstaking, intricate investigations for which Ger- 
man science has long been famous, — the slow piling 
of minute facts one upon another until they shape a 
great conclusion. Surely a better machine than the 
Reichsanstalt for forcing nature's secret storehouses, 
" putting questions to nature in the form of experi- 
ments," as Professor Lummer expresses it, was never 
devised. 

At the head of the Reichsanstalt is Professor 



172 Seen in Germany 

Kohlrausch, who succeeded to the position at the 
death of von Helmholtz. Professor Kohlrausch 
is also the director of the first department, that of 
physical inquiry, and Professor Hagen is director 
of the second department, that of technics. The 
cost of the two departments to the government is 
between $80,000 and $100,000 a year. The second 
department, which has charge of the testing of in- 
struments of precision and measurement, charges 
small fees for its work, which amount in the aggregate 
to about ten per cent of the total outgo. The first 
department, dealing as it does with abstruse inquiries, 
has no income whatever. Thus physics, for the man 
engaged in it, is no longer what von Siemens once 
called "a breadless art — a plaything for academic 
teachers in their hours of leisure." 

In its essence the work of the Reichsanstalt consists 
in establishing new and more accurate standards of 
measurement. That is the final purpose of all the 
experiments : it is, indeed, the chief aim of the science 
of physics. All modern mechanical operations de- 
pend on the employment of heat. Heat generates 
steam, is changed into electricity, drives steamships, 
reduces ores, warms buildings. It is, therefore, of 
the utmost importance to be able to measure heat 
accurately, for unless it can be measured it cannot be 
perfectly controlled. It is also essential to measure 
the effect of heat on gases, liquids, and solids, to find 




Prof. Dr. Kohlrausch, President of the Reichsanstalt 



174 Seen in Germany 

out how much it expands them, how and at what 
degree it consumes or melts or gasifies them. Such 
knowledge as this is essential to all manner of manu- 
facturing, smelting, power-producing operations, and 
as the manufacturing processes become more complex 
and more costly, the greater is the need of scientific 
accuracy at every step. The pottery maker, for in- 
stance, who is able to mix the clay for his fine wares 
by a certain formula based on a scientific knowledge 
of the glazing or melting points of each ingredient, 
and then to fire them in exactly the right temperature, 
will produce a more uniform product than his unskilled 
competitor, and his waste will be less. This growing 
need ot scientific accuracy in technics and mechanics 
has found response in Germany in the Reichsanstalt. 
And the chief work of the Reichsanstalt in both of 
its departments deals with heat measurements. It is 
patiently adding figures beyond the decimal point ; 
in its last report there is an account of a series of ex- 
periments which had for its sole object the carrying 
of certain established temperature calculations from 
the fifth to the seventh figure beyond the decimal, 
thereby adding just so much to the minute accuracy 
of determinations in which this calculation plays a 
part. 

One who watches the experiments with heat deter- 
mination at the Reichsanstalt cannot fail to be im- 
pressed anew with the stupendous difficulties with 



A Typical Scientific Institution 175 

which physics has to deal. Science, which sometimes 
seems the final standard of accuracy and completeness, 
in the light of these experiments appears unstable, 
without a sure foundation and without the possibility 
of a sure foundation, at the best only a series of 
approximations which may or may not be close to 
the truth. For all measurement is merely a series 
of comparisons. We say this room is fourteen feet 
in width. We mean that it has been compared with 
a little stick which we call a foot. The ordinary 
Frenchman would not have the faintest idea of the 
size of the room from such a measurement because 
he compares his rooms with a little stick called a 
meter. Plunge this Centigrade thermometer into 
this pail of hot water. The top of the thread of 
mercury touches a nick in the glass marked ninety 
degrees — a point located at that relative place be- 
cause an old scientist thought it convenient. The 
temperature of the water has been compared with the 
temperature of the mercury, it has caused the mercury 
to expand a certain amount, and this amount has been 
measured in small divisions called degrees. This 
comparative method of measurement would be abso- 
lutely accurate and practical for all human needs if it 
were not for the fact that the measuring instrument 
keeps changing. Supposing in measuring the width 
of a room the foot rule should shorten when a cold 
draft came under the door and should expand or 



176 Seen in Germany 

lengthen as it neared the radiator — as it really does 
do in a minute degree. Palpably your result would 
be inaccurate. 

Now, just these changes take place in heat-measuring 
apparatus. Here is your thermometer with the scale 
carefully cut; it is a good thermometer and it would 
furnish absolutely accurate measurements of ordinary 
temperatures if there were some ideal glass that would 
not also expand and contract with the heat or cold, 
and that would not change shape, and if the whole 
length of the thread of mercury could always be 
immersed in the liquid to be measured so that it 
would expand as much in proportion as the mercury 
in the bulb. 

Such an ideal glass thermometer, if it could be pro- 
duced, would work with what may be called absolute 
accuracy within certain limits. But even this ther- 
mometer, if the temperature went too high, would 
fail, because glass melts and mercury vaporizes, or if 
the temperature went too low, the mercury would 
freeze. Thus everything about us is constantly 
changing relations, so that there is no standard of 
anything — no real measure of length, breadth, thick- 
ness, weight, heat, light, or electricity. It is, there- 
fore, the tremendous task of the scientist to learn the 
laws of all these changes and to place them in the 
forms of curves and diagrams so that they can be 
worked out mathematically. In this way he can 



A Typical Scientific Institution 177 

make his measurements with a changing instrument, 
and then, knowing accurately from previous experi- 
ments how much the instrument has changed while 
the measurement is taking place, he can make the 
necessary corrections, thereby catching the elusive 
truth by surrounding it on every side and binding it 
down with many cords. And this is the work of the 
Reichsanstalt : in its first department it works out 
the deep laws governing substances under the influence 
of heat, light, and electricity ; in its second department 
the facts thus discovered are utilized in the production 
of marvellously fine instruments and in making 
practical tests of other instruments with them. 

Early experiments in the Reichsanstalt showed 
that the glass of most thermometers was defective, 
that it shrank or expanded or otherwise lost its 
shape, however minutely, so that the zero point soon 
changed, rendering all accurate measurements defec- 
tive. Therefore glass-making became the subject of 
thorough investigation in connection with the famous 
glass works at Jena, with the result that a certain 
superior kind of glass was invented, which, being 
chemically defined, could be reproduced always in 
uniform purity. By a system of baking and cooling, 
this glass was contracted to the last degree, and the 
resulting thermometer tubes were the most perfect 
ever made. Attention was then given to securing 
pure mercury and to marking the scale of degrees 



12 



178 Seen in Germany 

accurately on the tubes. Then the thermometer 
was tested for variations when it was standing per- 
pendicularly, and when it was horizontal ; it was sub- 
jected to various air pressures within and without, 
and the corrections in every case were noted, so that 
no possible source of error was left unsounded. The 
result was the production of the world's standard of 
thermometers, — thermometers that will measure to 
the thousandth of a degree. One of them that I 
touched — carefully enough, for they are delicate 
and costly creations — indicated in the upward leap 
of the mercury the heat of an instant's contact with 
the finger-tips. Having thus established a standard 
mercury thermometer for the measurement of tem- 
peratures, from about 30 degrees below zero to 350 
degrees above zero Centigrade, with an error rarely 
greater than one-tenth of a degree, the staff of the 
Reichsanstalt proceeded to make extensive experi- 
ments in the determination of temperatures lower 
than 30 degrees and higher than 350 degrees. 
Mercury boils at 350 degrees C, but if it is placed 
under the pressure of gas within the thermometer 
tube liquid, it can be kept up to 550 degrees. Pro- 
fessor Holborn, with Dr. Day, who, by the way, is 
an American, and the only foreign member of the 
Reichsanstalt staff, has worked with these gas ther- 
mometers for over three years with excellent results, 
obtaining a standard thermometer with a range much 



A Typical Scientific Institution 179 



wider than any heretofore produced, — from 30 de- 
grees below zero to 550 degrees above zero. This 
thermometer would 
measure temperatures 
still higher than this 
were it not for the fact 
that at this point the 
glass begins to soften. 
Beyond 550 degrees, 
then, other means 
must be employed, 
and extensive experi- 
ments have been made 
with what are known 
as thermo-electric 
junctions. A thermo- 
electric junction, such 
as is used in the Reich- 
sanstalt, is a very sim- 
ple contrivance of two 
fine wires about four 
feet long, fastened to- 
gether at one end. 
These wires are of 
different metals ; in 
older experiments 
copper and German silver were used, but more recently 
platinum, iridium, and rhodium — the most infusible 




Dr. Day Experimenting ^vith 
Thermometers 



i8o Seen in Germany 

of all metals — have been substituted. When the 
point of connection of these wires is heated, an electric 
current is set up, the more heat the more current ; and 
by measuring this current the temperature at the point 
of junction may be closely calculated. The Reichs- 
anstalt has successfully used the thermo-electric junc- 
tion for measurements as high as 1,775 degrees C. 
with greater accuracy than ever before. Higher than 
this the platinum begins to melt, thus putting an 
end to the experiment. 

In the same way that high temperatures have been 
invaded and subjected to measurement, thermometers 
have been constructed for measuring low tempera- 
tures. Dr. Day showed me a thermometer filled 
with clear petroleum ether, the first result of the dis- 
tillation of petroleum, — a waste product, by the way. 
As a result of testing many different substances, the 
capacity of this liquid for resisting great cold was 
discovered. It will not freeze even at the tempera- 
ture of boiling liquid air, although it becomes 
molasses-like a few degrees further down. By 
means of this thermometer fairly accurate determina- 
tions of heat can be made at a degree of cold hardly 
conceivable, — at least 190 degrees below zero Centi- 
grade or over 300 degrees below zero Fahrenheit. 

By these various means the range of temperature be- 
tween that of liquid air, 192 degrees below zero Centi- 
grade, which is nearly at the bottom of the ladder of 



A Typical Scientific Institution i8i 

temperature, to 1,775 degrees, where platinum melts, 
has been thoroughly explored. Beyond the melting- 
point of platinum, and up to the temperature of the 
sun itself, the Reichsanstalt has made probably the 
best-existing estimates. Indeed, its determinations 
of the melting-point of various metals — an investi- 
gation of the utmost importance to science and me- 
chanics, and as difficult as it is important — are 
standard the world over. Some of these tempera- 
tures, recently announced, may give an idea of the 
ranges of temperature covered in the Reichsanstalt 
investigations. 

Centigrade Scale, 

The sun, estimated 4,800 degrees 

Arc light 3*750 to 4,200 

Platinum melts ^>71S 

Argand lamps 1,700 to 1,900 

Gold melts 1,065 

Mercury boils 350 

Water boils 100 

Water freezes o 

Liquid air boils 192 

The history of the scientific attempts to determine 
the exact melting-point of gold would fill a good sized 
volume. Seven years of investigation have been given 
to it at the Reichsanstalt alone, and the figure above 
given nearly approaches absolute accuracy. 

The work of the second department in testing 
thermometers and other heat-measuring devices will 



l82 ^ 



Seen in Germany 



show what a practical hold the Reichsanstalt already 
has on the manufacturers of Germany and of the 




\ 



! 

I 
t 
I 

I 

Professor Hagen, Director of the Technical Department of the Reichsanstalt 

world. Director Hagen, who was for years an asso- 
ciate of von Helmholtz, told me that in 1899 the 



A Typical Scientific Institution 183 

Reichsanstalt tested over 77,000 physician's thermom- 
eters, sent to them by thermometer manufacturers, 
17,000 at the home institute and 60,000 at a branch 
in Ihnenau. Thousands of other thermometers of 
various kinds were also tested. The work consists 




Testing Thermometers 

in careful and accurate comparisons of thermometers 
submitted for examination with two or more standard 
thermometers, the observations being calculated by 
an assistant. When the comparisons are finally made, 
the letters P. T. R. (Physikalisch Technischer Reichs- 
anstalt) with the number of the instrument is etched 



1S4 Seen in Germany 

on the glass, and a certificate is provided giving the 
corrections necessary to make accurate readings. All 
this is done for a fee of from 60 pfennigs to one mark 
(14 to 24 cents) for each thermometer, — merely a 
nominal charge compared with the value of the in- 
struments. As a result of this certification and the 
prestige which it has given to German instruments 
for heat-measurement, the annual export of physician's 
thermometers from Germany has increased more than 
threefold since the Reichsanstalt was organized. It 
is significant that the certificates furnished with the 
thermometers are printed in nine different languages^ 
— certainly an evidence of the world-wide influence 
of this almost unknown German institution. 

Another important work of the Reichsanstalt is the 
effort to establish new or more accurate units of meas- 
urement. For instance, physicists say that the unit for 
the measurement of temperature, one degree, shall be 
the degree of heat required to expand a certain amount 
of hydrogen gas ^js ^^ ^^^ volume. This is as close 
an approximation to an absolute unit as science can 
make, for, having hydrogen gas and the necessary in- 
struments, the unit can always be obtained. But in 
measuring light there is no such satisfactory scientific 
method of measurement, and Professor Lummer has 
been engaged in trying to establish one. His ex- 
periments are as interesting to the scientist as they are 
complex to the layman. Briefly, he has attempted 



A Typical Scientific Institution 185 

to measure the heat radiated by one square centi- 
meter of pure platinum, — platinum being the most 
nearly perfect metal, — when heated just to the melt- 
ing-point. But platinum is a very hard metal to melt, 
and when it does reach the melting-point, it is still 




Measuring the Candle-Po^iver of Electric Lamps 

more difficult to measure its radiation. As yet, there- 
fore, the question is unsolved. 

The second department, on the other hand, has so 
improved the existing means of measuring light that 
its work is accepted the world over. As I have al- 
ready mentioned, our own government, through its war 



1 86 Seen in Germany 

department, has submitted electric lamps to be tested 
here and American manufacturers have repeatedly had 
standard lamps sent from the Reichsanstalt to furnish a 
basis of measurement for their own product. Indi- 
rectly, therefore, the Reichsanstalt assures the accu- 
racy of the candle-power on many incandescent lamps 
as they come from the American dealer. 

The old way of measuring light was to compare 
it with an actual candle of a certain size made of 
certain fixed materials. At best this process was ex- 
ceedingly uncertain, as any one may conjecture who has 
seen a candle puffed about by every wave of air. So 
Hefner, a German scientist, invented a lamp having 
a certain kind of wick and burning amylacetate. When 
the flame was 40 millimeters high it was said to equal 
one candle-power. The Hefner lamp, being the most 
accurate standard now at the disposal of scientists, is 
the present standard of measurement; but the Reichs- 
anstalt, finding that the burning of this lamp was uncer- 
tain and likely to be affected by drafts, devised a small 
electric lamp of exactly the same power. This, with 
proper control of the electrical current, burns steadily 
and continuously, — a nearly perfect unit for meas- 
urements. To the Reichsanstalt also the manufac- 
turers may send their lamps to ascertain at what 
strength of current they will burn longest, and at the 
same time give the most light, to see what kind of 
filaments are best, and so on, — all facts of great prac- 



A Typical Scientific Institution 187 

tical importance if the manufacturer would make his 
wares perfect. 

In this connection Professor Lummer has made a 
series of determinations of the cost per candle-power 
of the various kinds of light in common use (see 
table on following page). The results obtained are 
of great practical and economic value, inasmuch as 
every one is a light- user. Here are his determina- 
tions, the unit candle-power being the Hefner lamp. 

When the price of materials or energy is cheaper 
or dearer than indicated in the table, the price per 
hour for candle-power would of course be cheaper or 
dearer. 

Another series of inquiries, while having great 
practical value, leads the way to the solution of 
some of the deepest and most interesting problems of 
science. These are experiments in the conductivity 
of heat and electricity by various metals. In the first 
place the Reichsanstalt secured rods of the metals 
which by chemical and other methods had been 
wrought to a condition approximating absolute purity. 
I saw these rods of gold, platinum, silver, and so on, 
— the purest metals, probably, in the world. They 
were cylindrical in shape, about three-quarters of an 
inch in diameter and over a foot long. They will 
probably long remain the standard of purity. Begin- 
ning with these pure metals, the experimenters sought 
to learn all they could about the effect of heat and 



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A Typical Scientific Institution 189 

electricity upon them, measuring more exactly than 
ever before the expansion of the rods at various tem- 
peratures, as well as their conductivity to electricity. 
These facts are of great practical value, but the experi- 
menter goes further with his inquiries. He wants to 
know how the electricity passes through the metal, 
whether it slips around the molecules in the ether, or 
whether it jumps from molecule to molecule, or whether 
it does something else now quite unimagined. He 
knows much about how electricity passes through 
liquids by those wonderful little wanderers which science 
names eons, and he knows something about its passage 
through the gases. Indeed, President Kohlrausch of 
the Reichsanstalt has spent years of his life and has 
added much to scientific knowledge by his discoveries 
as to how electricity makes its wav through various 
liquids. But physics has not the faintest inkling yet 
as to the reason why electricity shoots instantly 
through a copper wire and passes not at all through a 
porcelain plate. If once the reasons for all these 
things can be discovered, perhaps that greater question, 
"What is electricity?" may be answered. So the 
experimenters are making every possible investigation 
as to the properties of metals. From the data thus 
obtained, mathematical curves of expansion and elec- 
trical conductivity are platted, and curiously enough 
these curves are often found to take the form of a 
parabola, — just such shape as the orbit of the comets 



190 Seen in Germany 

in heavenly space. When the results in any parti- 
cular metal indicate the symmetry of this curve, then 
a law of expansion of thermo-electrical properties or 
of resistance may be laid down. But some metals, like 
iron, nickel, and palladium, show astonishing breaks 
in the curves of expansion and electrical conductivity, 
and it is these breaks that interest the scientist most 
keenly, for such irregularities may furnish the master 
mind with the key to all the mystery. Much might 
be said of the wonderful speculations which all this 
work inspires ; but such digression must, perforce, be 
omitted to give place to those things to which the 
Reichsanstalt has already given scientific solidity. 

And one of these things is the tuning fork, 
the work with which furnishes one of the most inter- 
esting stories of the Reichsanstalt. Dr. Hagen tells it 
well. Musical pitch has a curious tendency to creep up. 
It is said that Bach's music sounds very differently 
now from what it did when Bach wrote it, because 
the instruments are now pitched higher. In 1882 it 
was found that the pitch of high A at the Vienna court 
opera had crept from the prescribed 435 double 
vibrations a second to 443, and in 1885 this number 
had further increased to 450. Accordingly, a musical 
conference was held and a resolution was taken to re- 
establish the old pitch of 435 vibrations per second. 
Upon this announcement the Reichsanstalt set up 
standard instruments, and has since tested and corrected 



A Typical Scientific Institution 191 

many hundreds of tuning forks, shortening them if 
they are too low in pitch, and thinning the arms if 
they are too high. All the miHtary orchestras of 
Germany are pitched aHke, and the Reichsanstalt keeps 
the tuning forks correct. And this solicitous care 
of the government in preserving standards is one 
of the lesser reasons why the world now goes to 
Germany in matters musical. 

In the same manner the Reichsanstalt has estab- 
lished the standard and become the final authority 
for the measurement of all kinds of electrical currents, 
both strong and weak, and of electrical measuring 
meters, dynamos, and other electrical devices as well. 
A whole laboratory with a cumulative-cell battery 
producing a current of 12,000 volts is devoted to 
testing electrical insulators of every sort. While I 
was there the experimenters were testing various so- 
called insulating varnishes. Then it has standard 
instruments for determining the purity of sugar, for 
measuring the accuracy of lenses of any size, for 
testing safety-valve caps, and for making magnetic 
determinations. It has manometers, the greatest 
in the world, for measuring atmospheric pressures, 
bolometers for measuring heat radiation, apparatus 
for testing glass to determine what receptacles are 
best for holding the various sorts of chemicals, 
pachymeters for measuring diameters very accurately, 
mechanisms for measuring screw threads and screw 



192 Seen in Germany 

holes and other remarkable apparatus, a bare descrip- 
tion of which would fill a volume. 

There are rooms in which the experiments are so 
delicate that the visitor is requested to remove his 
keys, knife, and all other iron or steel objects from 
his pocket before entering ; there are mechanisms 
for balancing delicate galvanometers and other ap- 
paratus so that they will not be disturbed by the 
banging of a door or the tread of feet, although it 
seems impossible that any commotion, however great, 
should jar these solid buildings. You see scales 
which weigh in water, — the famous water balance 
of von Helmholtz, — and near at hand are the 
most delicate scales in the world, the weights being 
all of aluminum, the largest weight being one gram, 
or about a quarter of the weight of a copper penny. 
On these scales, which are enclosed in an air-tight 
case, you may accurately weigh a hair from your 
eyelash. 

Discoveries of value are made in these rooms, 
devices are invented which, if patented, might yield 
the inventor a fortune ; but everything is free to 
science. In Germany the highest science offers 
what it finds for science' sake. That is one of 
many reasons why Professor Rontgen, who might 
have made his fortune from the world-benefiting 
discovery of X-rays, is so highly esteemed in Ger- 
many to-day. 



A Typical Scientific Institution 193 

1 think I have said enough of this astonishing 
institution to show its scope and its profound in- 
fluence not only in science, but in the practical busi- 
ness affairs of the nation which has given it life. It 
bears a part in the commercial race for supremacy 
in which Germany is now engaging so lustily. Eng- 
land, not slow to see its advantages, is already making 
arrangements for the establishment at Kew of a 
similar institution. A committee of English scien- 
tists has recently made several visits to Berlin, where 
its members were accorded every opportunity for see- 
ing the Reichsanstalt and for studying its methods. 
But as yet Americans are apparently unaroused to 
the importance of such an institution,^ although 
through the influence of several advanced American 
scientists the government has obtained some parti- 
culars as to the work of the Reichsanstalt. The 
United States government has not the resources nor 
the scientific interests of the German empire ; but the 
public spirit of American citizens, developed, per- 
haps, by this lack of parental care on the part of 
the governing power, have been founding univer- 
sities and libraries on a scale without parallel. May 
not some of them feel the need of such a scientific 
establishment as the Reichsanstalt ? 

1 Cornell University has a department in which many experiments 
along the lines pursued by the Reichsanstalt have been made. 



13 



VII 

HOW THE GERMANS CREATED A 
NEW INDUSTRY 



VII 

HOW THE GERMANS CREATED A 
NEW INDUSTRY 

The Glass and Lens Manufactories of Jena 

THE quaint old city of Jena, in the German 
Grand Duchy of Saxe-Weimar, is chiefly 
famous for three things. It has an un- 
fading claim on history because Napoleon 
once marched through its streets and won a celebrated 
victory on the hills to the north, — the battle of Jena, 
— and in the present it is known the world over for 
its university and for its glass and lenses. There are 
glass works, if not lens manufactories, of far greater ex- 
tent in America and in other parts of the world than 
these of Jena; and yet Jena glass and Jena lenses have 
their own unique claims to distinction, especially 
among scientists. Not only in their processes of 
manvifacture, and in the perfection of their products, 
are these works famous ; but the management of their 
business affairs furnishes a most unique and fascinating 
study in social economy, for here the dream of an 
idealist has been given unique and wonderfully practi- 
cal application, with the result that the workingmen 



igS 



Seen in Germany 



of Jena have opportunities and rewards unequalled, 
perhaps, anywhere else in the world. And, curiously 
enough, owing to the modesty of the originator of this 
scheme for the elevation of the v^^orkingman, and for 




Making Crucibles 

the advancement of science, very little has ever been 
published about it, and until now nothing in English, 
so far as I can learn. With German conservatism. 
Professor Abbe has desired to give his experiment the 
test of years before recommending it by a formally pub- 



A New Industry Created 199 

lished account. In the next chapter I shall speak fur- 
ther of Professor Abbe's remarkable philanthropy. 

For many reasons it is not probable that such in- 
stitutions as these — for in reality they partake as 
much of the character of public institutions as of 
regular business enterprises — could have originated 
in America. They would seem to be a product 
typically German, — a result in part of what may be 
called the German scientific temperament and in part 
of the wave of commercial expansion now sweeping 
over Germany. Many years ago Professor Abbe, 
who then, as now, filled the chair of applied mathe- 
matics, natural philosophy, and astronomy in the 
University of Jena, became deeply interested in 
lenses and lens-makingr. He had seen the defects 
of the lenses in use for astronomical and micro- 
scopical researches, and he set himself to establish 
by purely mathematical calculation the exact curves 
at which lenses would give the greatest possible 
effect with regard to the refraction and dispersion 
of the light which passed through them. In other 
words, he sought to form a new and scientific theory 
for making lenses. He then interested himself in 
the modest lens works of Carl Zeiss of Jena, and here 
he had lenses made according to exact scientific 
methods. Before his time lens-making was largely 
a matter of experience and experiment on the part 
of highly skilled workmen. Professor Abbe sue- 



200 Seen in Germany 

ceeded in laying down exact mathematical formulae, 
so that when a lens was ground with sufficient exact- 
ness to the rules of the measurement it must of 
necessity be correct. 

But it was not long before Professor Abbe dis- 



RemO'ving the Crucible from the Furnace 

covered that there was the greatest inequaHty in the 
glass which he was compelled to use in his lenses, that 
the power of refraction and dispersion of light varied 
widely with every melting, and he conceived the idea 
that if exact chemical formulae could be established 
for glass-making, and that if new kinds of glass could 
be produced by the use of other and hitherto untried 
substances, important new results might be obtained. 
In other words, a complete revolution in glass-mak- 
ing was necessary, in order to accomplish the great 
results at which he was aiming. The task seemed to 
be insurmountable, but it did not daunt him. His 
first step was to interest Dr. Schott of Witten in 
the work. Dr. Schott was not only a thorough 
scientist, especially in chemistry, but he possessed 



A New Industry Created 201 

a technical knowledge of glass-making, as it was then 
conducted. In 1881, the first smelting experiments 
were made in a small laboratory erected for that pur- 
pose. There was a deliberate plan on the part of the 
two scientists to solve by scientific methods the diffi- 
cult problems of glass-making, though they involved 
not only the most advanced optical research, but the 
most difficult chemical and technical manipulations, 
and Professor Abbe had clearly in view the possible 
establishment ot a business enterprise based on the 
discoveries which he hoped to make, should these 
be of sufficient importance. 

Such an enterprise as this is certainly typically 
modern, and it may be significant as indicating how 
the great new industries of the future are to have 
their origin. For two years Professor Abbe and 
Dr. Schott worked steadily ; they tried making glass 
with all manner of new materials, in many hundreds 
of different meltings, afterwards testing with the ut- 
most care each variety of glass to ascertain its optical 
properties. Almost at once they began to get prom- 
ising results, and after two years they were prepared 
to carry on their experiments on a larger scale, but 
this they did not have the means to do. In America 
or in England the work might have failed just at 
this point, but in Germany help came as help rarely 
comes outside of Germany. Professor Abbe laid his 
results before the Prussian government, showed what 



202 Seen in Germany 

had been done and what needed to be done, and the 
wide-reaching effect which favorable results might 
have in every department of science, — the possibility 
of making microscopes, telescopes, and photographic 
lenses of hitherto unequaled definition and power, 
and of producing thermometer and barometer glass 
which might advance the science of temperature and 
pressure determination. The government at once 
felt the commercial appeal. Germany must needs 
buy all of her glass for scientific purposes in Paris or 
in Manchester, and here was an opportunity of 
building up a new industry which would employ 
German workmen and bring money into Germany. 
So the Prussian government appropriated 10,000 
marks ($2,500) in 1883 and again in 1884 to have the 
experiments carried forward. At the end of that time 
so successful were the investigators that a regular 
glass-making establishment was well under way and 
there was no further need of government assistance. 
In four years' time these glass works furnished a large 
proportion of the fine scientific and optical glass used 
in Germany, and now their wares are known every- 
where in the world, — in the form of microscope and 
photographic lenses and prisms, in thermometers, in 
chemical apparatus, and in the highest grades of 
commercial glass. This little story is especially in- 
teresting as showing why Germany is making such 
extraordinary strides in commercial affairs. Out of 




Pouring Molten Glass into Lens Mould 



204 Seen in Germany 

Science, assisted by the state, has sprung a new and 
profitable industry. 

In all over one hundred new kinds of glass were 
originated and are now manufactured at the Jena 
glass-works. In former times glass was composed 
almost entirely of the silicates, potassium, lead, soda, 
and lime, and there were, roughly speaking, only two 
varieties : the old-fashioned standard crown glass and 
flint glass. Professor Abbe and Dr. Schott used no 
fewer than twenty-eight new substances in glass- 
making : phosphorus, borax, magnesium, zinc, cad- 
mium, bismuth, iron, mercury, antimony, tin, and 
others. Each of these substances had its own pecu- 
liar effect on the refraction and dispersion of light, 
and in doing away with or lessening what is known 
as the secondary spectrum. Much of the glass thus 
produced has been ground into lenses at the Carl- 
Zeiss Works, and the microscopes which resulted 
gave a new impetus to every department of science 
which has to do with minute forms of matter or of 
life. It would have been impossible for Dr. Koch 
and other great contemporary investigators, in bac- 
teriology, for instance, to have made the astonishing 
additions to our knowledge of the life of microbes 
and bacteria, had not Professor Abbe first produced 
a perfect or nearly perfect instrument for examining 
these low forms of life. In many of their published 
reports Dr. Koch as well as others give Professor 



A New Industry Created 205 

Abbe a large share of the credit for these profoundly 
important discoveries in connection with the germ 
theory. In the same way the Jena microscopes have 
done wonders in the hands of such men as Haeckel 
in laying bare the wonderful life processes of the 
lowest forms of plant and animal existence, in tracing 
the development of each, and in forming the great 
chain of proof of the theory of evolution. Much 
of our present minute knowledge of embryology 
and the growing mastery of the details of that mar- 
vellous machine, the human body, is due to the 
efforts of that modest, hard-working professor of 
Jena. 

The achievement of the investigators lay not so 
much in producing microscope and telescope lenses 
of higher magnifying power, — that service science 
did not need, — but in so perfecting the lenses that 
the image would be clear and clean cut, or, in the 
words of science, " in securing perfect definition." 
A microscope which magnifies 4000 times and pro- 
duces such a blurred image of a cell that the investi- 
gator cannot tell whether or not it contains a nucleus 
is not as valuable to science as one that magnifies 500 
times and brings out every minute detail distinctly 
and sharply. And that is also just the distinction 
between a good and a poor photographic or telescopic 
lens. Professor Abbe also introduced the svstem of 
oil immersion and other great microscopic improve- 



2o6 



Seen in Germany 



ments. Indeed, he may be justly called the " father 
of the modern microscope." 

From the investigations begun thus in a laboratory 
by Professor Abbe and Dr. Schott, have sprung two 
great manufacturing plants, separate and yet allied, 




4 "'? J^' 



'•'^ %' ., 






Putting Crucible into Cooling Furnace 



neither of which is able to keep up with the present 
demand for its product. We visited the Schott 
Works on the hill above Jena, where all the new 
varieties of glass are made, and afterwards, at the 
Carl-Zeiss Optical Works, we saw this glass ground 
and polished with infinite care and precision into 
lenses and prisms. 



A New Industry Created 207 

Both of these business institutions, founded on 
scientific investigation, still continue their scientific 
work. The lens manufactory has no fewer than 
twenty scientists on its staff, and the glass works 
has five, all thoroughly schooled investigators and 
mostly university doctors. These men devote their 
entire time and attention to experimenting along 
chemical, optical, mathematical, and technical lines, 
seeking to discover new processes and establish new 
principles which will be of value in the business. In 
this way the whole institution is kept on a thoroughly 
scientific basis and in the foremost van of progress. 
This idea of a scientific staff for a business institution 
has its most perfect development in Germany. In- 
deed, science lies at the root of some of the most 
progressive and profitable business enterprises in the 
empire. It is an expensive adjunct, — too expensive 
for practical work, think many American and English 
manufacturers, — but these men of business in Ger- 
many have shown how richly it pays back profits. 
The history of the utilization of coal-tar products in 
Germany makes one of the most romantic stories of 
science and business ; the development of electro- 
technics makes another. 

The lens manufactory, especially, has its own 
unique methods of doing business. A large telescope 
is looked upon as an artist would look upon his 
newest picture. It must be as perfect as it can be 



208 



Seen in Germany 



made, time and cost of materials notwithstanding, 
and when it is finished it is billed on the basis of 
its cost. Cheap instruments are made to provide 








V%)^^ 



m 



Sealing up Cooling Furnace 

work and training for the younger and less experi- 
enced workmen. And yet so great is the demand 
for the fine products of the factory that they cannot 
be supplied. Curiously enough, also, no patents are 
taken on instruments and processes, like microscopes 



A New Industry Created 209 

and microscopic attachments, which are used solely 
for the advancement of science, the men behind this 
unique institution having their hearts too deeply set 
on the advancement of human knowledge to hinder 
it by monopolies. The product of high-grade micro- 
scopes alone at this factory is over 1,800 a year, and 
each microscope comprises the work in some detail 
of over fifty men. 

In order to give a clear idea of the work of these 
two great institutions, it may be well to describe the 
operation of casting a great lens, as I saw it in the 
glass works of Jena. 

At the time of my visit it had just turned after- 
noon in the furnace-house of the glass works. 

For upwards of two hours everything had been in 
readiness for the casting of the great lens, everything 
except the glass. The master had directed the plac- 
ing of the huge circular iron mould near the open 
doorway and just between the two furnaces, — the 
one from which now burst the fervid white radiance 
of the molten glass, and the one in which through 
weeks of lessening heat the lens, when cast, was to 
be cooled and toughened and tempered. The mould 
was a meter and a quarter in diameter, — over four 
feet, — and the lens here to be cast would make one 
of the largest in the world, large enough to bring the 
moon within a few hundred miles of the earth, and 
one so perfect, perhaps, as to surprise new secrets 

14 



2IO 



Seen in Germany 



from the sun itself. The master had sprinkled the 
bottom of the mould with fine sand from a curious tin 
pot, that the hot glass might not take up impurities 
from the iron. A dozen brawny workmen, in blue 
blouses and wooden-soled shoes, had come in to man 
the long, wheel-mounted tongs which were to drag 




Polishing a Great Telescope Lens 

the crucible from the furnace bed. Other workmen 
with sledges and bars had torn a gaping hole in the 
front of the cooling furnace so that it would be ready 
for the instant admission of the lens. " Cooling 
furnace " seemed an odd misnomer, for a great jet 
of burning gas had been spouting into this tower- 



A New Industry Created 211 

like brick house for about two days, and as the work- 
men tore away its sides great stones, two feet thick, 
were seen to be white hot halfway through, and the 
workmen, experienced though they were, must needs 
step quickly to avoid the fierce outward burst of heat. 
At first the interior of this furnace, as seen through 
its gaping mouth, was without detail, — a glowing, 
white-hot hole of a brilliance that dazzled the eyes, — 
but as the cold air rushed in, the lips added color, 
apparently in waves, a faint wavering pink, followed 
by bloody red. Then, with another burst of heat, 
all definition would again blur to white, but only for 
an instant. With more cold air the colorings would 
return, each time in quicker succession, and each time 
the red showed deeper and darker and lasted longer. 
And finally one could distinguish plainly the flat 
stone floor of the furnace, where the lens was to 
rest, with the surrounding circular walls and the 
domelike top. 

So everything was ready. The master, shading his 
face with his upraised arm, peered into the " glory " 
hole of the melting furnace, as he had been doing 
with ever greater frequency for hours past. He 
watched for a moment the shimmering, wrinkled 
surface of the molten glass within the crucible and 
then he followed the movements of the stirring lever. 
Was the color exactly right? Did the sluggish waves 
which followed the stirring plunger show thick or 
thin enough ? 



212 Seen in Germany 

Twenty-four hours this crucible had been heating; 
within the furnace, melting together the various sili- 
cates, borates, and other minerals which the chemists 
had so carefully analyzed and measured and weighed. 
For twenty hours of that time a workman, standing 
at the end of a twenty-foot lever, the handle of which 
was kept cool by running water, had been slowly 
stirring the mass, so that the mixture would show 
neither veins nor stride nor bubbles, so that the light 
of some distant star might in the future pass through 
it to the eye of the interpreting astronomer without 
loss or change of colon To obtain this perfect glass 
there had been years of experimenting to discover 
the best combinations of glass-making materials ; 
there had been many failures because the crucible 
was not properly made, because the furnace was not 
heated evenly, because the molten glass was stirred 
so rapidly as to produce bubbles or so slowly as to 
leave seams, because the proper fluidity was not at- 
tained before the pouring, or because overheating had 
given the glass a bluish tinge when it should be water 
clear. Experience soon shows how to blow a perfect 
lamp chimney, and a thousand can be made in suc- 
cession without a defect, but a great telescope lens is 
not made every day. It is the final and greatest 
triumph of the glass-maker. And thus it was that 
the master peered often and anxiously into the glory 
hole of the melting furnace. 



A New Industry Created 2 i 3 

At last the time came. The master gave the word, 
and a dozen men sprang forward with hooks and 
bars. The glory hole was hardly larger than a 
man's head, — just sufficient for the passage of the 
stirring lever and to permit examination. With this 
as a beginning, the workmen tore out the whole 
front of the furnace, working with the utmost activ- 
ity, their heelless shoes clattering on the stone floor 
as they rushed back and forth. The stirring lever 
was dismantled, and the stirring plunger itself, white 
hot and sparkling with the dust that fell upon it, was 
cast outside where it lay, a deep wine red in the sun- 
shine. Though made of the most infusible fire clay, 
the lower end of this plunger was eaten away and 
melted out like a half-burned stick of wood, giving 
convincing evidence of the terrific heat of the furnace. 

The grappling tongs were thick bars of steel about 
thirty feet long, mounted on iron wheels. As soon 
as the furnace was open, the grappling ends were 
thrust inside, one on each side of the crucible, the 
men at the other end leaning back with heads averted 
to avoid the fervid outburst of heat. As the clay cru- 
cible stood there with the white-hot walls around it 
and the shimmering, liquid glass within, it seemed so 
lacking in clear-cut outline, so soft and immaterial, — 
like a bit of impressionism, — that one scarcely be- 
lieved it could be wrenched from its place in the pic- 
ture by anything so cold and hard as the steel tongs. 



214 



Seen in Germany 



Although the novice could not see it for the 
brightness of the glow, there was a thick ridge 
around the crucible, about half-way up. Under this 
the tongs fitted themselves. The men at the other 
end bore down hard, but the crucible did not stir. 
It was firmly fastened to the furnace floor by the 




In the Jena Glass Works. Biotving Cliemical Glass 

glass that had spilled in the melting. It was an 
anxious moment. Crucibles have been broken in 
lifting. The master raised his hand. Slowly the 
men added their weight at the far end of the lever. 
The crucible broke suddenly free, jogging a little, so 
that a bit of the glass overflowed and ran down like 



A New Industry Created 215 



thick syrup. An instant later the crucible was outside 
the furnace, filling the whole of the high, dim room 
with heat and light, like a new sun. And thus it 
was pushed down the room toward the mould, a thing 
of exquisite beauty and yet of terror, showing a 
hundred evanescent colors, changing red, pink, yellow, 
violet, and when one turned his eyes away, green, 
in every dark corner of the room. All the faces of 
the men glowed with it, and it seemed to throw their 
bodies in high relief against the thick darkness 
behind. 

The crucible was lowered to the floor, the tongs 
were removed, and a workman cast a board of asbes- 
tos over the glass to prevent too rapid cooling. 
Here it stood a few minutes, and when the cru- 
cible began to define itself, one discovered that it was 
made of fine yellow-glazed pottery. Imperfections 
on its surface stood out like specks on a mirror, or 
as one would imagine the spots on the sun. 

It had required a day for a man to fashion the clay 
of this crucible, and many weeks for it to dry. Be- 
fore being used, the crucible had gradually been 
heated for several days, so as to stand the high 
temperature when brought into the furnace. 

Three men with thickly gloved hands are now 
fastening an iron band around the crucible just under 
the ridge. On each side of this band there is a pro- 
truding pivot of steel which fits into a socket in the 



2i6 Seen in Germany 

ends of the grappling tongs, thus permitting the cru- 
cible to be tipped up as if on an axle. Again the 
men rest their weight on the other end of the tongs, 
the crucible is lifted, and an instant later it is 
poised over the iron mould. The critical point 
of all this labor has at last been reached. There 
is a pause as if the workmen felt the anxiety 
of the moment. The foreman, with his hand ready 
on the tilting lever, awaits the master's word. There 
is a shout, a quick upward swing of the foreman's 
arm, and out from the crucible slips the molten glass. 
It has been a moment of so much stress that one an- 
ticipates a crash as the glass touches the cool iron of 
the mould, but there is absolute silence, not so much 
as a hiss or the sound of the splash. There is some- 
thing indescribable about the fluidity of this mass. 
It seems thick, like oil, and yet it spreads swifter 
than water : it is more like quicksilver than anything 
else that one can think of, — and yet not at all like 
quicksilver. 

As the foreman pulls back the lever, molten glass 
drips from the edge of the crucible and sends up 
thick smoke as it burns the dust on the floor. A 
moment later this spilled glass begins snapping and 
cracking with almost explosive violence, the outside 
cooling so much more rapidly than the inside. And 
this is what would happen to the lens itself if it 
were not placed in a furnace where the heat could be 



A New Industry Created 217 

reduced gradually through many days or weeks. I 
picked up one of the bits of glass thus broken off. 
As I held it up to the light it gave no evidence of 
color, or bubble, or seam ; it was indeed so clear 
and clean and transparent that if it were not for the 
defining edges one might well doubt whether he had 
anything at all in his hand. 

The mould with the glowing lens inside was now 
covered with a plate of iron, wheeled to the mouth 
of the cooling furnace and lifted with chain tackle to 
the height of the furnace floor. A movable frame 
tramway was then placed underneath it, and it was 
quickly pushed into the furnace. Workmen were 
ready with brick and mortar, and in ten minutes 
the lens was walled in. Here it is cooled for two 
weeks and then brought again to the open air, dull 
and milky of surface and possessing only the general 
shape of a lens. After that for days and weeks 
workmen are employed in polishing it, not to give it 
the final form which it will have in the great tele- 
scope, but merely to prepare it for that important 
and anxious day when it will be submitted to those 
searching tests for imperfections, during which it 
must pass even the close scrutiny of microscopic and 
spectroscopic examination. A few bubbles it may 
have and pass, for bubbles have no effect except to 
reduce the passage of light in a minute degree, but 
veins, denoting the improper mixture of the ingredi- 



2 1 8 Seen in Germany 

ents of the glass, it must not have. If it passes all 
the tests, and sometimes it requires many castings 
and costs many rejected lenses of this most precious 
glass before the necessary perfection is attained, it is 
again sent to the furnace house, where with even 
greater care than before it is slowly raised to a high 
temperature, and thus annealed, and then as slowly 
cooled for many (eight to ten) weeks. After that it is 
ready for the lens-maker proper, that skilled mecha- 
nician and mathematician of Jena or of America 
or France, who polishes down its sides with infinite 
care, until they reach the required curves. Each of 
these processes has absorbed precious time and has 
cost much money : the bare glass for such a lens 
would cost not less than about ^5,000. To this 
the skill of the optician would add in polishing fully 
^20,000 more, so that the finished lens, ready for 
fitting into the telescope tube, would represent an 
expenditure of over 125,000. Through such paihs 
and expense as this must science pass that mankind 
may add a few facts to its knowledge of some dis- 
tant star. 

The German workmen are standing back from the 
cooling furnace, perspiring, the lens finally cast. 
A boy comes in with his apron full of beer, a bottle 
for each, and they drink in characteristic German 
fashion to the success of the work. It may be many 
a day before such another lens is made. 




Blo-cving and Dra-tving T/ie'rwonufer Tubes — the Most Perfect 

in the JVorld 



2 20 Seen in Germany 

Thus a great telescope lens is made. The manu- 
facture of optical glass for microscope lenses is a simi- 
lar though less spectacular process. 

The constituents of the glass are mixed with great 
care under the supervision of expert chemists, then 
the heating and stirring goes forward for several 
days until the glass is hardly thicker than water and 
thoroughly mixed. After that it is taken from the 
furnace and allowed to cool in the crucible. Of 
course it cracks into hundreds of pieces, some large 
and some small. These pieces are carefully assorted 
and all the imperfections chipped off. I saw two 
men, their eyes protected by goggles, employed with 
hammers at this work. It is interesting, and significant 
of the care required in these processes, that in spite 
of experience and the closest attention, more than one 
fifth of all the glass melted is regularly rejected, owing 
to imperfections. These pieces of glass are now 
placed in a square clay mould or chamotte of just the 
size that the future rough lens block is to be. Then 
it is set aside in the furnace, where for a month or six 
weeks it is slowly heated until the glass softens down 
and fills the mould, then it is as slowly cooled. The 
lens comes out looking like a rough block of sanded 
glass. The polishers now rub down two of the sides 
until they are perfectly clear and bright, so that one 
may look straight through the block and make the 
closest examination for flaws. The best of this glass 



A New Industry Created 221 

is as beautifully clear as a jewel. There are a great 
variety of shades from purest white to the deep yel- 
low ot the heavy lead glasses, the prices of some of 
the glass reaching as much as ^20 a pound. At the 
lens manufactory this glass is ground into lenses and 
prisms of every conceivable size and form, some 
lenses being not larger than a pin-head and as costly 
almost as a diamond of the same weight. Great skill 
is required in this work, because an error of more 
than one ten-thousandth of a millimeter in the curve 
of a lens makes it unsuitable for use in the highest 
grade of instruments. 

Another picturesque feature of the glass works is 
the great corridor where the thermometer tubes are 
blown and drawn. In the chapter of this book 
entitled "A Typical Scientific Institution,'* I de- 
scribed in what a wonderful way the German Em- 
pire, through its Reichsanstalt, has set the world's 
standards for accurate measurement of heat, light, and 
electricity. In the early days of its work the 
Reichsanstalt (then the Normal-Aichungs-Kommis- 
sion) joined with Professor Abbe and Dr. Schott in 
trying to produce more perfect glass for use in mak- 
ing thermometers, the glass formerly used being sub- 
ject to the influence of heat and cold. The result 
has brought all the world to Germany for high-grade 
scientific thermometers. 

We saw this glass in process of manufacture. A 



2 22 Seen in Germany 

boy workman caught a bit of molten glass from the 
furnace on the end of a blow-pipe. It was hardly 
larger than a walnut, but by twirling and blowing and 
moulding, it grew to the size of an orange, with the 
shape of an acorn. More glass was then added, and 
there was more rolling and blowing, and when the 
proper stage was reached the blow-pipe was passed 
quickly to the brawny master-workman. He in his 
turn added glass, blowing from time to time with 
cheeks outpuffed until it seemed as though they 
must burst, and then rolling the great ball of glass on 
his iron kneading-board until it looked like a huge 
yellow gourd. Faster and faster he worked, keeping 
the ball always symmetrical and yet white-hot. At 
length he lifted the glowing mass quickly in the air, 
and a second workman attached his blow-pipe to the 
bottom. Then the two men ran in opposite direc- 
tions, twirling the pipes and blowing lustily from 
time to time. From a thick, portly yellow globe 
the glass thinned out quickly as the men ran apart, 
until it became a dull red tube not larger than a man's 
little finger and nearly three hundred feet long. 
Sometimes in drawing these tubes one of the blowers 
would not only run the length of the corridor, but far 
outside on the hill. And that is the way a ther- 
mometer tube is blown and drawn. It requires 
only a moment in cooling, and then it is broken 
up into short lengths and sent to the ovens for 



A New Industry Created 223 



tempering and annealing. In these rooms also are 
blown the finest glass for chemical apparatus, for 
incandescent gaslight chimneys (30,000 of these 
per day), and for other purposes requiring high- 
grade glass. 



VIII 

A GERMAN VENTURE IN PRACTICAL 
PHILANTHROPY 



i.s 



VIII 

A GERMAN VENTURE IN PRACTICAL 
PHILANTHROPY 

Professor Abbe and his Profit-Sharing System 

WITHIN the next few years the world, 
particularly that part of it which is 
engaged in the task of bettering the 
condition of the wage-earner, is des- 
tined to hear much of the extraordinary experiments 
in practical philanthropy carried on by Professor 
Abbe of Jena. In the preceding chapter I have 
given some account of the glass and lens works of 
Jena, and how they were created in typical Ger- 
man fashion through the remarkable scientific experi- 
ments of Professor Abbe and Dr. Schott. These 
manufactories, though conducted on thorough busi- 
ness principles and yielding large profits, partake 
more of the nature of public institutions than of en- 
terprises for private gain; they indicate perhaps what 
may be the future condition of all great business 
enterprises. 

Professor Abbe lives just across the street from 
the huge buildings of the lens manufactory. His 



228 



Seen in Germany 



home is a little one-and-a-half story building, old- 
fashioned and German-like. It is thickly surrounded 
with trees and shrubs and laid out with flower beds. 
At the time I saw it the lilacs were in full bloom, and 
the fragrance drifting across the street filled the rooms 
where the glass polishers bent low to their work. 




Professor Abbe 

Here Professor Abbe has worked year by year in 
his favorite fields of optics, mathematics, social econ- 
omy, invention; and although now well along in years 
he is not lacking in his zest for new and more diffi- 
cult problems. Every summer he takes a short va- 
cation in Switzerland, where the people of the village 
at which he stays know him merely as " the German 
professor." Thus quietly he has lived, watching the 



A Venture in Practical Philanthropy 229 

factories rise around him and win him a fortune. 
From the first he was deeply interested in the welfare 
of the workingman, — an interest hardly second to 
his love for science, — and out of this interest grew 
the Carl Zeiss Stiftung (institution) named from his 
friend Carl Zeiss, which now controls the entire lens 
manufactory with its 1,200 or more workmen, and 
owns a half-interest in the glass works with its 400 
workmen. 

The Stiftung is unique among institutions. It is 
the creation of a law of which Professor Abbe was the 
author, and it is in the nature of a corporation under 
state control. To this Stiftung Professor Abbe 
turned over all his interest in both of the great plants 
at Jena, retaining only a directorship. A com- 
missioner of the Grand Duchy visits the works every 
week and assists the local directors in carrying out 
the tenets of the law. The purpose of the Stiftung 
is twofold. First, it provides for the comfort of the 
personnel of the works, from the directors to the 
lowest apprentice boy, by means of a unique system 
of pensions, sick benefits, profit-sharing, and educa- 
tional advantages. Second, it provides for large 
contributions toward the advancement of science. 
No one connected with the institution receives any 
of the private profits of ownership. Professor Abbe 
himself receives merely the salary of a director, which, 
according to the law controlling the Stiftung, can 



230 Seen in Germany 

never be more than ten times the average salary of 
workmen aged more than twenty-four years and 
for more than three years in the service of the firm. 
And this class of workmen now receives less than 
$500 a year. But Professor Abbe is entitled to a 
pension when he shall cease his active connection 
with the business, the same as every other employee. 
If it should be absolutely necessary to discharge a 
workman, he must not only be given due notice, but 
the Stiftung must pay him, if he has been employed 
for more than three years, a sum equal to his total 
wages for from six months to two years, according to 
the length of time he has been in the works. And 
after five years' service every workman who retires 
for age or invalidity receives a pension, or should he 
die, his family is pensioned. In this way he is 
absolutely secure in his work. The Stiftung sets 
aside a certain definite sum from its earnings every 
year, and this is so invested outside of the busi- 
ness that it will pay all pensions and discharge ad- 
vances, thus making the pension system independent 
of the vicissitudes of the business, for even though 
the business fails, money will be on hand to pay 
the regular pensions of old and faithful servants. 
Every workman is given a two weeks' vacation every 
year with pay for half of it, and he is also paid in full 
for all holidays except Sundays. Moreover, the 
whole lens manufactory, with Professor Abbe at its 



A Venture in Practical Philanthropy 231 

head, is like a great family. Every month a delegate 
from each of the departments, thirty in all, meet with 
the directors and discuss the conduct of the work. 
These delegates are never foremen, but represent the 
men themselves, and the suggestions they make are 
from their own point of view, not from that of the 
foremen. Last spring the subject of shorter hours 
of labor came up, a subject of which Professor Abbe 
and the other directors had already been thinking. 
The workman delegates to the conference suggested 
eight and one-half hours a day : the directors 
promptly responded, "Why not try eight hours?" 
Every workman was questioned, and six-sevenths of 
them asserted that they could do as much work in 
eight hours, working faster than they could in the 
longer day. Lens-grinding Is very confining work, 
especially fatiguing to the eyes and even more so to 
the nerves. So on April i, 1900, the experiment of an 
eight-hour day — a very great innovation in Germany 
— was begun. The hours of work were from 7 to 
11.30 A. M. and from 1.30 to 5 p. m., the long noon- 
ing giving the men ample time to go home to dinner 
and to rest thoroughly for the afternoon's work. 
Director Fischer informed me that the plan so far as 
it had been tried was a great success, fully as much 
work being accomplished In the short day as had 
hitherto been accomplished in the long day ; and he 
thought that the work was of better quality, although 



232 Seen in Germany 

the experiment had not then been in progress long 
enough to permit of positive assertions. 

In addition to these advantages to the personnel 
within the works themselves, the Stiftung has spent 
large sums of money in other directions. I visited 
an extensive and highly popular free reading-room, 
said to be the largest institution of its kind in 
Germany, the Germans having always depended on 
the cafes for their periodical literature. A fine library 
building to contain a good collection of books as well 
as this reading-room is soon to be constructed. The 
Stiftung also contributes largely to the local hospitals 
that its workingmen may be cheaply treated ; it has 
established special courses of instruction for its men 
in mathematics, physics, drawing, mechanics, and in 
the German, English, and French languages ; it has 
instituted a free swimming bath in the Saale River; 
and it is helping to build walks and summer houses 
along the mountain-sides and in the forests around 
the town, — those strolling and social spots which a 
German so dearly loves. 

All of these advantages help to attract to the lens 
manufactory an unusually intelligent and productive 
class of workmen — and indeed for these fine opera- 
tions great intelligence is required. So far as possible 
young men are taken and specially trained to the 
requirements of lens-making ; and as they grow older, 
the cumulative advantages of the pension and profits 



A Venture in Practical Philanthropy 233 

system, as well as the short hours, tend to keep them 
where they are, even though tempted elsewhere by 
offers of higher wages. 

These are by no means all the advantages which 
the Stiftung offers its workingmen, but they will 
suffice to indicate its purposes in this direction. In 
its other activities, science has already felt the influ- 
ence of the Stiftung. It has established and equipped 
a fine astronomical observatory in the University of 
Jena ; it has founded a new chair of mathematical 
physics and will build a fine laboratory for experi- 
mental physics; and it is a large contributor yearly 
to other departments of investigation at the Univer- 
sity of Jena, Professor Abbe still filling the chair of 
astronomy and natural philosophy in the University. 
Nor are its interests confined to Jena alone, but ex- 
tend to science in general, even to the considerable 
assistance of a recent Polar expedition. Such activi- 
ties as these — and they are as much a part of the 
business of the Stiftung as the making of glass and 
lenses — seem odd enough as looked upon from the 
exceedingly practical point of view of ordinary busi- 
ness life. 

The Stiftung has now, 190T, been in existence ten 
years with great success. The profits of the business 
have been large, and its activities in science and in 
benevolence have been correspondingly large. It was 
the state that helped the work in the beginning by the 



2 34 Seen in Germany- 



liberal contributions of money that enabled Professor 
Abbe and his associates to carry on their experiments, 
and now the German people, and indeed humanity in 
general, are reaping the reward. And in case the 
Stiftung should ever go out of business, for whatever 
reason, one-half of the proceeds remaining after the 
debts are paid will go to the city of Jena, to be used 
for the good of its inhabitants, and one-half to the 
University of Jena. Not a cent is reserved for 
private disposal. 

Professor Abbe devotes most of his time to the 
working out of this great philanthropic idea. Antici- 
pating at the time he drew up the law governing the 
Stiftung that forethought could not provide for every 
possible condition, he reserved to himself the right, 
until the year 1906, to make changes in the statute. 
In this way he is able to correct any errors or in- 
justices as time and experience point them out. 
After 1906, however, there can be no more changes : 
the law will be absolute and perpetual ; and as long as 
lenses are made at the Carl Zeiss works, so long will 
its workmen enjoy advantages almost without equal 
anywhere in the world, and so long will science have 
a strong and faithful ally. 



IX 
HOW THE GERMANS BUILD SHIPS 



IX 

HOW THE GERMANS BUILD SHIPS 

The Vulcan Shipyard of Stettin 

THE Vulcan shipyard at Stettin is sig- 
nificant of the New Germany, — the 
navy-building, ship-loving, world-trading 
Germany which had its birth almost 
within the reign of the present Kaiser. The Vul- 
can's first vessel slipped from its cradle into the 
Oder as long ago as 1852, at a time when the 
ships of the Clyde and the Severn and of our 
own Bath and Gloucester controlled the seas. Ger- 
many was not then a sea power, nor indeed a united 
nation. She possessed few ambitions beyond the 
land limits of Prussia, and Bismarck and von Moltke 
had only dreamed of the empire that was to be. For 
more than thirty years the ships from the Vulcan 
yards were few and small, — sometimes one or two a 
year, sometimes none at all, and once, during our 
Civil War, there were ten, although the tonnage of 
this entire number was less by far than that of many 
a single modern ship. 




Shipping the Rudder 



How the Germaiis build Ships 239 

All this has now been changed. No longer must 
Germany go to England for liners and warships. 
She has produced her own cunning ship-builders, men 
trained in her own yards, and yet conversant with 
every improvement known to the shipyards of 
America or England. Not only does she build her 
own vessels, but so eager is she for that self-sufficiency 
which marks every great and warlike nation that she 
insists that German workmen shall also make the 
steel for the plates of her ships, and build the engines 
and boilers, forge the great shafts, design the electri- 
cal devices, and decorate the interior with German 
paint and tapestries. 

" If we have war," says the Kaiser, " and have 
need of ships, we must depend on ourselves, not on 
England." 

And so it has come about that Germany has built 
some of the greatest shipyards in the world : the 
'' Vulcan " at Stettin, the " Schichau " near Dantzig, 
the " Germania " at Kiel, and the " Blohm und Voss " 
at Hamburg. In the 13 years from 1882 to 1895 
statistics show that the number of workmen in 
Prussian shipyards alone nearly doubled, rising from 
13,161 in the former year, to 25,343 in the latter, 
and the increase from 1895 to 1901 has been even 
larger. Germany has now the two greatest steam- 
ship lines in the world, — the Hamburg-American 
and the North German Lloyd, — and in the tonnage 



240 Seen in Germany 

of its merchant steamships it stands second only to 
England. The marvelous growth of the German 
navy is a matter of such common report that it need 
hardly be mentioned here. All this growth in ship- 
ping has served to stimulate German ship-building and 
to crystallize the German ambition to control the seas. 
The German may be said to have developed 
a ship-building art of his own. This has been the 
result of the thoroughness which is a characteristic 
of his race, the minute and scientific study of details, 
which has enabled him to bring to final perfection 
the best-known processes, so that his vessels possess 
a distinctive character and completeness. This de- 
velopment and progress has been fostered by the 
parental solicitude of the German empire, which 
coddles its favored industries in ways absolutely 
unknown to such a government as that of the United 
States. For instance, the imperial government pays 
large postal subsidies to German steamship com- 
panies upon condition that new ships shall be built 
in German shipyards, in so far as possible; special 
rates are made on the railroads (which are owned 
by the government) on materials to be used in 
ship-building, and the duties on certain materials 
from foreign countries to be used in ship-building 
are entirely remitted. These are only a few of 
the many ways in which the government encourages 
its ship-builders. 



How the Germans build Ships 241 

The Kaiser himself, who is as much a sailor as 
he is a soldier, knows to the last detail every capa- 
bility, and one might almost say, every piece of 
machinery, in such works as those of the Vulcan. 
And so it has come about that the Germans are 
great ship-builders, — a fact but just dawning on 
the world. 

I visited the Vulcan works in April, 1900, and 
I hope by giving an account of what I saw there 
to convey some idea of the character and importance 
of the German ship-building industry. The Vulcan 
works are located within the ancient town of Bredow 
on the banks of the river Oder, where the Norse 
vikings once beached and caulked their ships. They 
are about twenty minutes by electric car from the 
heart of Stettin, constituting in themselves a verit- 
able city of grim brick shops flashing with the light 
of forges and resounding with the din of hammers. 
At noon the wooden soles of seven thousand work- 
men clack on the cobble pavements that lead from 
the works, now the greatest on the continent of 
Europe. 

At the time of my visit there were no fewer: than 

nine huge vessels in course of construction, seven 

yet on the ways, and two in the water. And all 

about new shops were building and new machinery 

was being set up to accommodate the necessities of 

expanding enterprise. Of the nine ships seven were 

16 



242 Seen in Germany 

for German steamship companies and one a ship 
of the Hne for the German navy, such an addition 
of high-class vessels as few of the great nations of 
the world can boast. The other two were war 
vessels, — one a cruiser for Russia and the other, 
the " Yakuma," then just completed, for Japan. Of 
the German liners two were the greatest ships in the 
world with a single exception, and both were designed 
to have a speed greater than that of any existing 
merchant ship. And it is significant as showing how 
closely the government works hand in hand with 
the great captains of German industry, that these 
splendid vessels, although intended for the Atlantic 
passenger service and to be fitted with a degree 
of luxuriousness hitherto unapproached, were all 
being constructed under the requirements of the 
German navy. On the deck there were beds for 
the mounting of great guns, the rudder and screws 
were especially protected from the possible harm 
of shots, and apparatus was provided for steering 
below decks in case the upper works were carried 
away. Guns are always ready at Hamburg or at 
Kiel, the crews are organized, and in a fortnight, 
should the empire need them, these peaceful pas- 
senger ships could be made terrible engines of war. 
It may be said that Germany learned this lesson 
from her English cousins ; now she might give 
instruction to her instructors. Where Germany 



How the Germans build Ships 243 

thinks once of her industries and commerce, she 
thinks twice of possible war. 

In 1898 there came from the Vulcan works what 
was then the largest and swiftest of all ocean steam- 
ships, the " Kaiser Wilhelm der Grosse " constructed 
for the North German Lloyd Steamship Company. 
While she was building, there were those who 
prophesied disaster, — first because of her size and 
her required speed, and second because she was 
coming from German works. Could these Germans 
thus take the lead of England ? These prophets 
had seen in the " Campania " and " Lucania," built in 
English yards during 1892 and 1893, the last degree 
of perfection in ship-building. The great success 
of the " Kaiser Wilhelm der Grosse" did more than 
any other one thing, perhaps, to establish the world 
fame of the German ship-builder. Hardly had she 
been well tested when a still greater and still swifter 
ship was planned, — the " Deutschland," for the 
Hamburg-American line, just being completed at 
the time of my visit. The " Deutschland " is not 
as long, nor quite as broad as the " Oceanic," then 
recently from the yards of the Irish builders at 
Belfast ; but she is next to her in size and much 
swifter, — indeed, she is the fastest merchant vessel 
that ever sailed the seas, as she was the most costly 
in her machinery and equipment. But the su- 
premacy of the " Deutschland " was even then chal- 



244 Seen in Germany 

lenged by the Germans themselves. On the ways 
of the Vulcan works there was a long brown spine 
of steel, knobbed with rivets and almost ready 
for the ribs. It was the keel of an unnamed ship 
which was to be as large as the " Deutschland " ; 
and another was then being planned to surpass even 
the " Oceanic." A few years ago builders said 
confidently that the limit of size of vessels had been 
reached ; now, there is none who would venture 
to name a limit. The time may come when an 
ocean steamship will have so many decks that 
passenger elevators like those in a modern " sky- 
scraper " will become a necessity. Nor is this 
improbable when one realizes that the " Deutsch- 
land " is in reality a six-story building, to say noth- 
ing of its deep basement and its roof garden. 

The time has come in ship-building when the addi- 
tion of half a knot of speed is an epoch, and the 
Germans seem determined to keep in the lead. The 
builder is so hemmed in and set about with problems 
that the half-knots beyond 22 — and there are only 
a few 22-knot merchant ships — mean a vast outlay 
of money, time, and skill. And yet these fractional 
knots are paying investments. A shrewd old captain 
of one of the German ships said to me : 

" The American likes to feel that he is making a 
fast passage. He likes to reckon on the day's run, 
and loves nothing better than to boast of a record 



How the Germans build Ships 245 

trip. Yet he does n't seem to mind an extra day out 
any more than a German." 

In this catering to the demand of the foreigner 
whose business he seeks, Hes one of the great secrets 
of German business success. Whether he is sup- 
planting the American lamp-trade in China by supply- 
ing a lamp bearing Chinese characters, whether he is 
studying just the needs of the Brazilian native, or serv- 
ing the American with a gorgeously decorated ocean 
greyhound, he is the same accommodating, gentle- 
manly shop-keeper who wins trade because he can 
satisfy his customer's demands better than his rival. 
He goes to a country, learns its language, and studies 
the characteristics of its inhabitants with singular pa- 
tience, then he calmly acquires its trade. The Eng- 
lish trader has never bent to this method ; he has been 
content for the most part to talk to his foreign cus- 
tomer through an interpreter, and he usually takes the 
attitude that goods which satisfied the British market 
are quite good enough for any foreigner. So Germany 
has been going up and England down. 

It is probable that if a great steamship company 
should order a 750-foot ship to make 30 knots an 
hour, the builders would take the contract, — ea- 
gerly, too, such daring has success engendered. But it 
would be in a spirit of solemnity. The steamship 
companies are not ready, however, to go forward so 
rapidly as that, — the money involved is too great. 



246 Seen in Germany 

Yet in the " Deutschland " they have built a vessel 
686^2 feet long, 67 >^ feet broad, 44 feet deep with a 
record speed of over 23 knots (about 26^ miles) an 
hour. 

In order to force such an enormous mass of steel, 
machinery, and coal through the water, the builders 
must of a necessity construct engines such as no other 
ship ever had, — indeed, the greatest engines in the 
world, either on land or on sea. Few people will 
realize what that means. It requires 33,000 horse- 
power to drive the " Deutschland " so that she will 
make a fraction of a knot more of speed than the 
" Kaiser Wilhelm der Grosse " or the "Campania." 

The greatest German warship, the " Kaiser Friedrich 
III.," has only 18,000 horse-power; the "Oceanic," 
the greatest of ships in size, has only 27,000 horse- 
power; the " Campania " has 30,000 horse-power. It 
was therefore unknown ground that the Vulcan 
builders covered when they undertook to build the 
world's greatest engines. But there was no uncer- 
tainty about it. Indeed, in ship-building almost 
everything depends on experience. The builders 
knew to almost the last detail just what was necessary 
to the construction and operation of such enormous 
machinery, the strength of every bit of metal, the 
sizes of the parts that would give the greatest effi- 
ciency, and yet occupy the smallest space, the proper 
location in the ship of the vast weights of the boilers, 



How the Germans build Ships 247 

the coal bunkers, and so on, — all of these facts had 
been established by years of experience with smaller 
craft. And yet it seems a marvel that such a ship 
with its hundreds of engines and pumps, its electrical 
system, its air-power system, its cunning devices for 
preventing accidents, and its thousand and one other 
important details could be planned complete in six 
months' time. It required the continuous work of 
over a score of draughtsmen to do it, to say nothing 
of the greater work of the men in whose brains the 
beautiful lines of the ship were first traced, and who 
planned the engines and solved to a nicety those 
wonderful problems of strains, and of vibration and 
balance, a single mistake in which might have ruined 
the entire creation. When one realizes how com- 
pletely a great ship must be built in a man's brain 
before it rises in steel within its wooden scaffolding, 
one feels like calling this monster the mightiest work 
of human conception, — a work involving in its lines 
the highest type of beauty and symmetry and in its 
construction the deepest scientific and mechanical 
knowledge. A ship — man's greatest mechanical ac- 
complishment ! Nothing could better gauge the 
height of a nation's industrial accomplishment than 
the state of her ship-craft. I have felt, therefore, 
that in giving a clear idea of what was required in 
brain, brawn, and material resource in constructing 
the world's fastest and costliest merchant ship, I 



24B Seen in Germany 

should go far toward interpreting the genius of 
German builders. 

As in other branches of art, the ship-builder must 
work within certain circumscribed limits. He is 
walled in by the practical and the expedient. If he 
might suit his own fancy, what a wonder of a ship 
might he build ! But there are certain inexorable laws 
of nature as well as laws of man which he must ob- 
serve. They are like the rules of a race which every 
ship-builder, be he German or English, must observe, 
and if he makes his extra half-knot in spite of the 
rules, he is the greater genius. 

For instance, if the ship-builder could make his 
vessel of any depth he might build much larger and 
there would be practically no limit to his speed ; 40 
knots would be almost as easy as 23. But he must 
construct his ship so that it will float into the harbor 
at New York and Liverpool and Hamburg, where 
the channels are hardly beyond 30 feet in depth. At 
the same time, if he would have her make a high 
speed he must fit her with enormous engines, and 
yet if his engines are too large his vessel will not 
carry enough coal to get her across the Atlantic and 
leave any room for passengers. If he increases 
breadth to make her carry a larger load, — in other 
words, if he makes her " tubby," — he cannot drive 
her through the water at the required speed. On 
the other hand, if he makes her too long in propor- 



How the Germans build Ships 249 

tion to her breadth and depth, she will break her 
back with the enormous weights which she carries 
and the thrust of her machinery. And yet one is 
astonished at the immense length of the great Hners 
in proportion to their width. Builders have been 
increasing length year after year with practically no 
increase in width. One standing on the bridge of 
nearly any of the greater ships, if he have a keen 
eye, may see her body bending with every wave like 
a huge bow, — only a little, but bending. This is 
not a sign of weakness, but a tribute to the skill of 
the builder, for a ship built so as to be absolutely 
rigid, if that were possible, might soon be racked 
apart. 

These are only a few of the difficulties with which 
the builder must wrestle, but they will serve to indi- 
cate faintly the delicacy and intricacy of the art — 
the necessity of striking just the proper proportions 
of depth, length, breadth, weight, so that the vessel 
will derive the greatest possible speed from the work 
of her engines. 

After these problems of size and proportion are 
settled there is the further difficulty of the balancing 
of the great ship. The layman, seeing some such 
vessel as the " Deutschland " afloat with the line of 
her red bottom just level with the green line of the 
sea, little appreciates what problems have been sur- 
mounted in producing such splendid steadiness. 



250 Seen in Germany 

Here are engines and boilers weighing thousands of 
tons ; here are bunkers which must be loaded with 
other thousands of tons of coal ; here are hundreds 
of tons of other machinery, water tanks, cargo, and 
so on. They must all be so arranged In the long 
narrow shell of the ship that she lists neither to right 
nor to left, and so that throughout her whole 700 feet 
of length, more or less, she never sinks more than a 
few feet deeper at one end than at the other. Then 
there is the problem of preventing the vibration of 
the propellers as nearly as may be from shaking the 
ship, of ventilation, and of providing a strong 
draught of air to the furnaces forty or fifty feet be- 
low the upper deck, — all these, and many other 
problems quite as difficult, must be solved before the 
first plate of steel for the ship is ordered. 

Then there are other handicaps. The marine in- 
surance companies — the Lloyds — must be placated 
to the last degree, for their men are on hand to watch 
every step in the building of the ship. She must 
conform, for instance, to the hundred and one rules 
of safety ; her forward ribs must be especially strong 
to resist ice or collision, she must have so many 
pumps, so much fire-fighting apparatus, so many 
water-tight compartments, and so on, else insurance 
cannot be obtained for her. Next there are two gov- 
ernments to step in and make further regulations 
which must be obeyed. Few people realize with 



How the Germans build Ships 251 

what jealousy a government watches its ship-builders 
to see that proper accommodations are made for pas- 
sengers and crews and that the vessel is provided with 
safety appliances. The laws of Germany on this 
subject fill a small book, and the regulations are iron- 
clad, even to minute details. For instance, the law 
specifies the size of berths ; they must be at least so 
long and so broad, so high from the floor, and so far 
from the ceiling. There must be 2.8 square feet of 
room for each passenger on the promenade deck and 
so many cubic yards of space in each state-room. 
There must be a boat of a certain specified size for 
every 100 passengers, and a life-belt of a certain 
buoyancy for every person. The law specifies the 
minimum limit of medicines, provisions, and water 
that must be carried, and sufficient room must be 
made for all of these things. The window ports 
must be a certain distance above the water line, so 
that they may be opened in good weather ; the stair- 
ways must be at least so broad ; there must be hospi- 
tals for each class of passengers with four beds for 
every 100 persons, and so many ventilators for pro- 
viding fresh air for the cabins and steerage. And 
when all the German regulations are complied with, 
the American laws go still further and demand hand- 
fire-pumps and a drifting anchor, so that the ship may 
be steered in the remote possibility of a loss of both 
her propellers and her rudder. 



252 Seen in Germany 

In addition to all this handicapping in the race 
for speed, the imperial government of Germany 
steps in and demands the military accessories and 
equipment to which I have already alluded. 

With such formidable limitations before him the 
ship-builder must plan his vessel, and if he succeeds 
at the last in making a beautiful ship and a record 
speed, great must be his honor, and great the honor 
of the nation to which he belongs. 

The casual visitor at a great ship-building estab- 
lishment is rarely aware of the importance of this 
preliminary work in which the genius of the supreme 
craftsman has its keenest expression. He sees a few 
absorbed men in a loft bending over desks and 
drawing tables or making computations. They are 
not particularly impressive, especially when his eyes 
still see green from the light of great forges, and his 
ears still ring with the thunder of sledges. And 
yet it is here that the ship is first built — finished 
to the last rivet in plan and blue-print before the 
first block of the bed is laid in place. A score of 
men directed by the brains of the master engineers 
and designers have created a ship in six months 
which will require the labor of 1,500 men for nearly 
two years to body forth in steel. 

And yet the brawn of the ship-builder is not less 
important than the brain — and its manifestations 
are much more fascinating to the visitor. For here 



How the Germans build Ships 253 

are the realities which the senses may grasp, — huge- 
ness, power, toil, noise, heat, dust. These are the 
impressions that lay deep hold upon a man, and fix 
in his mind forever afterward the meaning of a great 
ship. Here are red plates of steel and angle irons, 
huge raw castings of bronze, brass, copper, steel ; 
here is lumber, tow, hawsers, paints. They lie in 
shapeless piles just as they came from the mills and 
factories. They are without meaning — a chaotic 
aggregation of material. Seven thousand men in 
blue blouses and wooden-soled shoes, each working 
at his own minute task, — the beveling of the raw 
edge of a plate, the driving of rivet holes one by 
one, the stirring of white-hot forges, the endless 
striking on red metal with sledges, lifting, fitting, 
fastening, and in twenty months' time there stands 
forth a great ship, — a thing of matchless beauty, sym- 
metry, power, speed, so coherent and perfect that one 
man by a turn of the wrist can control the move- 
ments of all her vast mass. 

The River Oder at Bredow is only a narrow stream 
without tides or perceptible current. When I saw it 
first the water Vv^as a murky brown blotched with bits 
of rotten ice. Where the Vulcan works spread along 
its shore, the bank rises at a gentle slope, and here 
stands the scaffolding for seven ships. So narrow is 
the river that three of these cradles have been placed 
at a sharp angle to the water in order that when the 



254 



Seen in Germany 



greatest ships are launched they may not crush into 
the opposite bank. A ship's scaffolding at a distance 




The '■^ Deutschland'''' six months after her keel ^voas laid. Shonving the 
keel, ribs, the second, or ^^ false'''' bottom, and the girders ^vhich are 
to support the decks 

resembles a gigantic basket, one end of which rests 
in the edge of the water, while the other reaches 



How the Germans build Shi 



PS 255 



high up on the bank. On nearer approach, the 
sides of this basket resolve themselves into an intri- 
cate maze of timbers of enormous proportions. 
Here the ship is born. The interior of the 
basket has been cunningly fashioned by the artificer 
until it follows the lines of the future vessel, — a 
sort of huge wooden mould. At the bottom runs 
a long low ridge of stout timbers, called the bed, 
sloping down to the water's edge. This is to sup- 
port the backbone or keel of the ship. In one 
of the cradles the keel-pieces of a new warship had 
just been laid. A crew of riveters were at work 
fastening the vertical keel-piece to the horizontal 
keel. Imagine a machine as tall as a man, and 
having the shape of your thumb and finger when 
fashioned in the form of a C. A boy at a hand 
forge throws a bursting red rivet. Another work- 
man seizes it with tongs and drops it into a hole 
in the ship's spine. There is a shout and a quick 
signal ; the giant thumb and finger of the machine 
close in and come deliberately together, one at each 
end of the rivet. There is no sound, but when the 
machine opens again and draws away, the lower end 
of that rod of iron, as thick as a man's two thumbs, 
has been crushed like so much putty into a rounded 
head. This rivet shrinks in cooling and draws the 
beams of steel together until they are like one solid 
piece. And that is the daily work of the pneuma- 
tic riveting machine. 



2i;6 Seen in Germany 



The ribs of the ship come from the mills in long, 
straight L-shaped beams which must be bent to the 
delicate curves of the ship's body. A wide iron 
floor full of equidistant holes, a furnace 6^ feet 
long, — of a length great enough to hold and heat 
the ship's longest rib, — a force of workmen waiting 
for the furnace door to open, — that is where the ribs 
are shaped. The master workman has pegged out the 
curve of a rib by fitting iron pins in the holes of the 
floor. When the signal is given, the furnace door 
bursts open, emitting a blinding glare of light and 
fervid heat. A single dark figure, black against the 
glow, grapples with huge pincers in the furnace 
mouth ; the workmen, but a moment before standing 
inert and lax of muscle, now bend their shoulders to 
a hawser, and the bar of metal, so hot that its edges 
bear no definite outline, is dragged forth. With in- 
finite deftness and fearlessness, with swiftness and yet 
without hurry, this flaming bar is crowded against 
the pegs of the curve, the workmen smiting it with 
hammers, driving other pegs, straining at levers, and 
smiting again. Once the steel wrinkled, in bending, 
like a blotting-pad, as if reluctant to submit. A 
brawny giant, his face glowing from the upward glare of 
the metal and dripping with perspiration, drove down 
upon it with a great sledge until it was flattened 
again into submission. In two minutes' time a simple 
L of iron had become a ship's rib, curving in the 




Bending a Ship'' s Rib 



258 Seen in Germany 

shape of the hull and ready for service except for 
rivet-holes. 

In ways just as fascinating the steel plates which are 
to form the outer skin of the ship are fashioned. 
They come from the rolling mills of Westphalia or 
from England in the form of square or rectangular 
plates of varying thickness ; and they must be bent 
and trimmed to the necessary shapes to fit the ship. 
Here is a pair of enormous rollers of steel like the 
rollers of a laundress's wringer. Between them 
a plate of steel as large as two dining-tables is fed, 
leaving part of it sticking straight out. At just the 
proper moment, a third roller rises from below, 
pushed upward by the resistless force of hydraulic 
pressure. When it reaches the plate, we start back, 
expecting to see the cold steel snap like glass ; but 
instead it bends upward as easily as though it were 
pasteboard, until it is almost L-shaped. Then the 
noiseless but mighty roller that has done the work 
slips back again. Such is the quality of the steel 
that goes into a modern ship, — it must stand the 
strain while cold of being bent almost double with- 
out breaking. 

Around the head of each cradle at the Vulcan 
yards there is a cluster of machines covered with 
umbrella-like canopies of corrugated iron. There 
are thick, saw-like shears that trim the steel plates 
three-quarters of an inch thick, as a little girl would 



How the Germans build Ships 259 

snip the corners of a bit of calico cloth. Other 
machines there are that bore endless numbers of rivet- 
holes in beams, girders, and plates, others countersink 
these holes ; still others level off the edges of the 
plates, and then a huge crane lifts them over into the 
scaffolding, dangles them, though they weigh ten tons 
each, just where they are to be placed, and the work- 
men fit and fasten them in. 

One year from the time that the keel of the 
" Deutschland " was laid, her hull was finished. It 
loomed huge and brown through the scaffolding 
which still protected and supported it, and it was 
ready to take the sea. In January, T900, the Em- 
peror came up from Berlin with a brilliant guard of 
officers. Count von Bulow pulled the silken cord, 
champagne was spattered on the great ship's stern, 
and she shot forward into the water, almost filling the 
little river. There she stood exposed for the first 
time, unfinished indeed, but bearing the promise of 
her future beauty. This shell of steel weighed up- 
ward of 9,200 tons, and had cost all of a million and 
a quarter of dollars. There was yet to be added the 
engines and the fittings which would bring her total 
weight to over 16,500 tons, and her total cost to over 
$3,000,000. 

In the Vulcan shipyards one tool stands supreme 
in importance over all others. It goes by the highly 
expressive title of " shear-legs," a kind of crane. 



260 Seen in Germany 

The greatest pair of shear-legs at the Vulcan works 
is mounted on twin pontoons, the legs rising in the 
form of an enormous inverted letter V to the height 
of 150 feet above the water. From the top hangs 
heavy chain tackle which will lift a hundred tons — 
200,000 pounds — as easily as a boy would pick up 
a penny. There is something majestic in its power, 
its perfect poise and sufficiency. We saw it drop its 
great hooks down over one of the " Deutschland's " 
steel pistons which weighed something over five tons. 
It reminded one of the leisurely sweep of an ele- 
phant's trunk. The hooks were made fast, a dwarf 
of a man blew a whistle, and. the piston was heaved 
into the air, swung out over the water and low- 
ered into the dark chasm of the '^ Deutschland's " 
hold. And this is the way all of the heavy interior 
fittings — the engines, pumps, boilers, stacks, masts, 
and so on — are placed in the ship. For a clear reali- 
zation of the perfect supremacy of man over matter, 
one has only to watch the splendid power and docility 
of this great crane. It might have taken fifty men a 
week to do what the shear-legs did easily in ten min- 
utes — if men alone could have done it at all. 

With Captain Albers, to whom fell the honor of 
taking the " Deutschland" on her first voyage, Mr. 
Varian and I went up the broad plank gangway which 
led from the river bank to the promenade deck of the 
vessel. Fifteen hundred men were there at work 



How the Germans build Ships 261 

on her, hammering, sawing, planing, fitting; and yet 
so huge was she that the force seemed small, and 
there were whole areas where not a man was to be 
seen. 




Captain Alhers of the '■'■ Deutschland'''' 

These men of the Vulcan works possess their own 
peculiar interest to the American visitor. They are 
not quite so foreign as he expects : he sees the strong 
cousinship of sweat and grime and strength. But 



262 Seen in Germany 

for a little more, perhaps, of stoop and stolidity, a 
little more of patience in their faces, these might be the 
men of an American shop. There is work done here 
by strength of shoulder — heaving and hammering 
and lifting, that in America would be done by steam 
or electricity, and yet as long as man-muscle is cheaper 
than steam so long will it be employed. In dress, 
the German workmen strongly resemble the Ameri- 
can, except in the shoes, many of which are heelless 
with thick wooden soles. There is also the unfa- 
miliar German blue blouse falling from a yoke at the 
shoulders and hanging loose around the waist, which 
some of the workmen wear. The German works 
longer hours and earns much less money than the 
American ; but while food commodities are higher for 
the most part in Germany than in the United States, 
he lives much cheaper than the American, because he 
is willing to live on poorer fare and in homelier quar- 
ters. He does not as rule save much money, for 
he must have his beer and his lottery ticket ; but he 
pays regularly for insurance against accident, sickness, 
and old age, and he also contributes regularly to a 
burial fund so that he may be decently interred when 
he dies. And yet he is industrious, skilful, pains- 
taking, and even dully ambitious. In a preceding 
chapter, on the German workingman, I have given 
other interesting facts in regard to these ship-builders 
of Stettin. 



How the Germans build Ships 263 

The space over the " Deutschland's " engines still 
gaped wide open at the time of our first visit, sug- 
gesting from the upper deck an enormous grimy pit. 
The cylinders for the main engines were still open at 
the top, the largest being nearly nine feet in diameter, 
with a weight of 45 tons, — larger than the funnels of 
many a large steamer. Having gone down three 
stories of decks, we descended a ladder fully 30 
feet long, into the depths of the vessel. One may 
read indefinitely the cold figures relative to the size 
of the engines and boilers in an ocean-steamer, and 
still he will not realize their greatness. But let him 
get down, pygmy-like, among the machinery itself 
and look up, and he will receive an impression of size 
and power such as he will never forget, — and espe- 
cially if he visits this greatest of all engines. When 
we had stooped through dark passage-ways, and 
climbed obscure ladders through the under parts of 
the enormous machinery, we came to a little door in 
what seemed the side of the ship. Once through it, 
we straightened up, and there before us another vast 
machine reared itself. It was the other engine, the 
engine that propelled the second of the twin screws, 
exactly like the other in every respect. It was as if 
one had reached the very limit of his capacity for 
comprehending bigness, and had then suddenly been 
called upon to double his impressions. After that it 
was interesting, but not really consequential, to know 



264 Seen in Germany 



that there were eight miles of pipes in the sixteen 
boilers, that there were 128 cylinders in the engines, 
and that the ship had nearly a third of a mile of rail- 
road track for carrying her coal from the bunkers to 
the furnaces. 

It was interesting to hear Captain Albers explain 
how the great ship was balanced, the engine just aft 
of amidship, boilers forward, fresh water in great 
tanks on each side just balancing each other, coal in 
the bunkers around the boilers so that in case of 
war the enemy's shot could not pierce to the ship's 
vitals, and how water could be let in from the sea to 
this or that compartment to balance the coal burned 
away. This was all interesting, but we felt more 
deeply impressed by the strange, cold, dark, resound- 
ing hole in the extreme stern and at the bottom of 
the great ship, which we reached through a door in a 
steel wall. Here in silence and almost without 
human attention, works the mighty rudder arm of 
the ship. It travels in a cogged quadrant, and it is 
so big that the engine which runs it is perched on top 
of it, and rides back and forth as the rudder answers 
the touch of the steersman's finger on the bridge a 
fifth of a mile away. Once every watch, a man looks 
in at this piece of mechanism, and once a day it is 
newly provided with oil ; otherwise it works alone in 
the dark. If you crowd to one corner of this room, 
and look up through a steel well of apparently incal- 



How the Germans build Ships 265 

culable height, you may possibly see a bit of light. 
That hole may be said to have been made especially 
for the young Emperor of Germany. Once he said : 
" Suppose this ship became a cruiser, and suppose she 
met the enemy, and then suppose her bridge were 
carried away by a shot. How then could she be 
steered? " So that steel hole was made from the top 
of the ship to the bottom. A narrow ladder runs 
down its side, — you can see the faint daylight glint 
on the rounds, — and when the bridge of the 
" Deutschland " is shot away, the men in blue will go 
down the ladder and steer the ship from below, where 
shots cannot come. 

The " Deutschland " may be said to be twenty-one 
ships in one. In passing up the vessel from stern to 
stem, we crept through numerous gangways of steel, 
the doors of which could be instantly closed, and so 
screwed down on rubber battens as to be impervious 
to both water and air. In case of an accident at sea, 
two men spring instantly to each of these doors and 
close them fast, and the ship, a moment before a 
single great apartment, becomes twenty-one separate 
rooms, having no connection below decks. If one 
or two, or even Hvq, of these compartments fill with 
water, the ship will still float with the buoyancy of 
those remaining. And each compartment has its 
own pumps and its own means of escape for passen- 
gers, so that even though there is a yawning hole in 



n 



266 Seen in Germany 



the ship's bottom, she may yet sail safely into port. 
No modern improvement has done more to render 
safe a passage of the sea than this. The " Deutsch- 
land" also has two bottoms. It is surprising enough 
to be walking on what seems to be the solid floor of 
the ship, to feel that the water is only the thickness 
of a steel plate from your feet, and then suddenly to 
come upon what seems a hole in the bottom of the 
ship, and to see dark, oily water a few feet below. 
The real bottom of the ship lies from four to eight 
feet beneath the false bottom ; both are almost 
equally strong, so that if a hidden reef bursts through 
the outer plates, there will still remain a firm, dry 
inner bottom to keep out the water. This wide 
space — it might be called the sub-basement of the 
vessel — has also its own separate compartments into 
which water can be let at will to balance the ship, if 
she does not ride evenly. 

After the ship's engines and boilers, perhaps the 
most impressive pieces of mechanism are the shafts, 
which reach from the engine out through the stern of 
the vessel, where they drive the propellers. In 
many respects, also, these shafts are the most diflicult 
of any part of the ship to produce. They are made 
of a special, high-priced nickel steel. Each of them 
is 215 feet long, longer than many good-sized ships, 
and twice as large around as a man's body. They 
must needs have strength to drive such a weight of 



How the Germans build Ships 267 

steel through the water at such a speed. Each bears 
on its tip end outside the ship a screw-propeller of 
manganese bronze, each blade of which weighs four 
and one-half tons. They are the work of that great 




07ie of the Piston Heads of the " Deutschland"'' 

German, Herr Krupp, of Essen, and they represent 
the acme of the art of steel-making. Upon its ar- 
rival from the mills, each shaft is in five parts, and it 
looks rough and coarse. But the workmen at the 
Vulcan fit the pieces one by one into an enormous 
lathe, and plane them down as a cabinet-maker would 



268 Seen in Germany 



turn the leg of a chair. We saw such a lathe at 
work, and picked up fine shavings of nickel steel, 
curled and strong as a spring. 

Such a vessel as the " Deutschland " would have been 
an impossibility a few years ago, not only for mechan- 
ical reasons, but because she could not have been made 
to pay. The " Deutschland " will carry no freight and 
almost no express. She is wholly a passenger and, 
mail steamer — and she is now a possibility because 
people are richer and every year more of them travel 
back and forth between Europe and America. And 
to make such a speed as that of the " Deutschland " 
means that so much room is required by the power- 
producing machinery and coal that there really is n't 
any space for a large cargo. But for her purpose — 
that of carrying 1,328 passengers across the Atlantic 
in the least possible space of time and with the great- 
est luxury — the " Deutschland*' is the perfection of 
the ship-builder's art. Never before was a ship fitted 
with such elegance. There will be not only single 
staterooms, but suites of rooms, each with its own 
bath, and berths that close like those in a Pullman 
car; there will be private dining-rooms, a special grill- 
room on the upper deck ; there will be dumb-waiters, 
electric fans in many of the rooms, a special play- 
room and gymnasium for children, and other new 
conveniences. 

Some few facts about the new ship may help to a 



How the Germans build Ships 269 

realization of what a great modern ocean-liner really 
is, of how absolutely complete she must be made in 
every particular. The " Deutschland," for instance, 
has a complete refrigerating plant, four hospitals, a 
safety deposit vault for the immense quantities of gold 
and silver which pass between the banks of Europe 
and America, eight kitchens, a complete post-office 
with German and American clerks, thirty electrical 
motors, thirty-six pumps, most of them of Ameri- 
can and English make, no fewer than seventy-two 
steam-engines, a complete drug-store, a complete fire 
department with pumps, hose, and other fire-fighting 
machinery, a library, 2,600 electric lights, two barber- 
shops, room for an orchestra and brass band, a tele- 
graph system, a telephone system, a complete printing 
establishment, a photographic dark room, a cigar-store, 
an electric fire-alarm system, and a special refrigerator 
for flowers. And she is one of the two great foreign 
liners having four funnels; the other is the" Kaiser 
Wilhelm der Grosse." That is the way that these two 
leviathans may be known from all other ships. She 
also has the usual two masts. Theylook stubby enough 
when mounted on her vast bulk, and yet they are so 
tall that the " Deutschland " could not get under the 
Brooklyn Bridge at New York, and so large around 
that while they are building a man lies inside of them 
driving rivets. 

As the " Deutschland " lay completed at the Vulcan 



270 Seen in Germany 

yards, she sank so deep into the water that she could 
not of her own power get out to the Baltic Sea. The 
River Oder was too shallow to permit her passage. 
As a consequence, it was necessary to lift her over the 
bars by means of a number of great steel boxes or 
pontoons. An equal number of these pontoons were 
arranged on each side of the vessel, and as they lay 
there filled with water, enormous chains were passed 
between them and under the ship's keel. Then the 
water was pumped from the pontoons, and as they 
grew lighter they lifted the " Deutschland " with them, 
just as a life-preserver raises a man out of the water. 

But in spite of these measures, the " Deutschland " 
ran aground on a bar when partway out to sea. With 
characteristic vigor, the Kaiser, when he heard of the 
accident, sent one of the vessels of the imperial navy 
to help drag her off, showing the keen interest which 
the government takes in the welfare of her merchant 
marine. 

As we last saw the " Deutschland " at the Vulcan 
yards, she was within a few weeks of her first sailing. 
She had not been painted, but dabs of red and chalk- 
marks covered her steel sides from stem to stern, and 
down close to the water near the bow, where she would 
first touch salt water, some German workman, with feel- 
ing for the monster on whom he had so long been toil- 
ing, had scrawled in big letters, " Gliick auf," " Good 
luck." 



X 



SOME NEW EDUCATIONAL IDEAS IN 

GERMANY 



X 

SOME NEW EDUCATIONAL IDEAS IN 

GERMANY 

« 
A Commercial University — History-Teaching by 

Object-Lessons, School Gardens 

IT Is now a good many years since the world began 
going to Germany for educational Ideas, and Ger- 
many seems to be provided always with a new 
supply. The Germans have apparently devel- 
oped an instinct in the matter of education. Having 
originated a new industry, or built an especially inter- 
esting building or piece of statuary, the next step, as 
a matter of course, is to utilize this new material for 
educational purposes, either to advance the new In- 
dustry, or to impart the significance of the new build- 
ing. The educator is never more than a step behind 
the manufacturer and business man ; he is nothing if 
not intensely practical. The manufacturing spirit 
of Germany gave birth to the best and greatest tech- 
nical schools in the world, and they in turn have 
stimulated the spirit which produced them. In the 
same way, when Germany rose in power as a com- 
mercial nation, her educators at once began devising 
means for training young men In those branches of 



274 Seen in Germany- 

special knowledge which would fit them for promot- 
ing in the highest possible degree this new develop- 
ment of German activity. The German has learned 
the profound lesson that a specially educated man is 
invariably more valuable in any given line of activity 
than a man who has merely a general education. 
Even a horseshoer is better for a thorough educa- 
tion in his especial art, — hence the famous horse- 
shoeing school at Dresden. 

I visited the new Commercial High School (Han- 
delshochschule) at Leipzig and had the pleasure of an 
interview with its director, Professor H. Raydt. It 
was interesting to learn how this school came into 
existence, for no recent educational enterprise is more 
significant of the alertness of the New Germany in 
grasping future necessities and in providing means 
for supplying them. In the first place, there was the 
great fact that Germany was building up an enormous 
foreign commerce, and that every year a large number 
of trained men was needed to carry on this business. 
For some years Germany had possessed commercial 
schools of two different ranks, namely, the " commer- 
cial continuation schools" (Fortbildungsschulen), in- 
tended to give elementary education to young clerks, 
especially those employed in the retail trade, and the 
so-called "commercial schools" (Handelsschulen), 
similar to the commercial colleges in this country, 
offering a thorough practical education in the require- 



Some New Educational Ideas 275 

ments of a commercial career, such as knowledge of 
modern languages, book-keeping, banking, commer- 
cial arithmetic, geography, and so on. But these 
schools, good as they were, did not supply such high 
class men as were needed for waging the bitter strug- 
gles for commercial supremacy in foreign lands, — 
meeting the alert American and the experienced 
Englishman. This need must be supplied. 

In 1896, a number of members of the Leipzig 
Chamber of Commerce began the movement for the 
establishment of a new school, which should be in 
effect a commercial university. They worked so 
vigorously that in a short time they had interested 
all the other Chambers in Saxony in the scheme, and 
a united appeal was made to the Saxon government. 
There was no delay ; it was a good work and the 
administration at once provided for the establishment 
of a school, to be supervised by a senate thus com- 
posed : one representative of the Saxon government, 
one representative of the city of Leipzig, the president 
and two other representatives of the Chamber of 
Commerce of Leipzig, three professors in Leipzig 
University, two teachers in the old commercial school 
at Leipzig, and the director of the new school. 

With characteristic German caution, the school was 
started at a minimum of cost. Teachers were mostly 
provided from the University of Leipzig, and the 
total outlay did not exceed $2,000 a year, of which 



276 Seen in Germany 

11,250 was guaranteed by the Leipzig Chamber of 
Commerce and I750 by the Saxon government. 

The Handelshochschule was opened on April 25, 
1898, and the first students were graduated at Easter, 
1900. The course is two years in length, but stu- 
dents may enter at any time and remain as long as they 
see fit. As in the German Universities, the Handels- 
hochschule has two classes of matriculates, first the 
regular students (die Studierenden) and the " lec- 
ture visitors '' (Horer). The average cost to students 
is about J50 a year, and board and lodging in Leip- 
zig can be had at a low price. 

It was not expected that more than fifty students 
would attend the school during the first year, but 
there were ninety-seven enrolled during the opening 
semester, and at the time of my visit in the spring 
of 1900 there were more than two hundred and fifty 
students in attendance, and they came not only from 
Germany, but from many foreign nations — especially 
from Austria, Belgium, and Russia. Some of them 
were men of maturity, over thirty years of age, who 
yet wished to fit themselves for a commercial life ; 
the average age of students, however, was about 
twenty years. 

The course of Instruction Is eminently practical. 
Including such subjects as economics, public finance, 
commercial and maritime law, the history of trade, 
colonial history, theory of modern socialism, inter- 




<3 






s 



278 Seen in Germany 



national law, statistics, social questions, commercial 
geography, modern political history, economic and 
constitutional history, chemical technology, corre- 
spondence and book-keeping, stenography, typewrit- 
ing, and practical training in the Chinese, French, 
Italian, English, Spanish, and Russian languages. 

Especial attention is given to the languages, with 
the intention of making every student proficient in 
ordinary correspondence and letter-writing, — such 
knowledge as will be of practical value to the man of 
affairs. The students are also allowed to select 
courses in the University of Leipzig, and they have 
all the other opportunities which that famous old 
institution can provide. Every student is allowed 
to choose his own course. 

It is expected that the school will fit a man to 
engage in any of the growing German export and 
import industries, giving him such a knowledge of 
foreign language and law that he can fight a thorough- 
going business battle anywhere in the world. Cer- 
tainly, such an addition yearly of trained men to the 
ranks of business cannot fail to have a profound 
effect in winning commerce for Germany, especially in 
view of the fact that most Americans and English- 
men embark in business without any special training. 
The struggle among the nations of the future is to be 
commercial rather than military, and Germany has 
gone into the work of thorough preparation, in a way 



Some New Educational Ideas 279 

to make her rivals pause and take thought. It is by 
no means wise for Americans to count too much on 
their splendid natural resources and the energy of 
their workingman ; science and thorough education, 
such as Germany is bringing to the struggle, must 
not be neglected. 

Another new idea in education, which, while of less 
importance than the commercial high school, is yet 
significant of the trend of educational development. 
It was in Germany that the system of teaching from 
object-lessons, of which the laboratory method is an 
outgrowth, had its beginnings. Every year sees the 
value of this system more clearly proved, every year 
shows striking new developments. One bright after- 
noon in the Thiergarten in Berlin I saw a large class 
of girls marching up one of the walks with the master 
at the head. Out of curiosity I followed slowly. 
They stopped finally before one of the splendid new 
groups of statuary which the Kaiser is building to 
commemorate the deeds of his forefathers — the 
Hohenzollern family. Each group represents a king 
and his two chief councillors, graven in marble and 
of life size. The master gathered his class around 
him and began telling the story of the king and of 
the characters of his two advisers, and of the great 
deeds they did. It was a good story, and with the 
marble faces there before them this bit of German 
history must have remained fixed in each pupiTs 



28o Seen in Germany 

mind, besides giving her a new idea of the glory of 
the German nation. I learned that visits to the 
various statues and new buildings were a regular 
feature of school life in Berlin and other German 
cities ; one cannot help comparing it with the old 
method of history-teaching. 

A similar development is the school-garden system 
that has grown up in a number of German cities, 
notably Plauen in Saxony and Leipzig, where I visited 
the gardens. The plan is exceedingly simple. A 
plot of ground within easy reach of the schools has 
been set aside for the growing of all sorts of vegetables, 
fruit, flowers, and weeds. It is under the direction 
of an expert gardener who is also more or less of a 
botanist. On Wednesdays and Fridays large classes 
of boys and girls may be seen marching through the 
streets to visit the gardens, — a kind of outing that 
is both vacation and schooling. The master accom- 
panies his class and directs a lesson in transplanting 
trees, sowing all the various kinds of vegetable seeds, 
trimming the fruit vines, cultivating the ground, 
gathering the crop, and lastly, preparing and fertiliz- 
ing the soil for the crop of another year. The 
advancing season brings a new lesson each week, 
from the methods of killing cabbage butterflies in 
spring, to the testing of a melon to see if it is ripe in 
the fall. Here, also, in certain places weeds are 
allowed to grow, that each boy and girl may learn to 



Some New Educational Ideas 



281 



know his garden enemies and how to exterminate 
them. Poison ivy and other poisonous plants are 
grown in a plot by themselves, and they, too, are 




A Lesson in Tree Planting 

Studied, so that they may be instantly recognized and 
avoided in the woods. Nor is the information all 
practical ; while the pupil is learning gardening, the 
teacher also instructs him in botany, zoology, and 
entomology. It is wonderfully interesting on a bright 



282 Seen in Germany 

afternoon to see this Leipzig garden with its swarm 
of children, — some chasing cabbage butterflies and 
learning why they are butterflies and not moths, 
where they lay their eggs, and how they pass through 
their various stages ; others picking strawberries, while 
the teacher explains what strawberries are botanically, 
how they put out runners, and how they may be trans- 
planted. Others are hoeing and raking and learning 
how the pulverization of the soil admits air to the roots 
of the plants, and so on, combining science and prac- 
tice in a way that not only fixes the facts in the pupil's 
mind, but gives them significance and importance. 
The school garden at Leipzig is beautiful as a bit of 
landscape-gardening; it has a charming pond full of 
water plants, with a paviUon near at hand under which 
the pupils may seek shelter in case of rain. To these 
beauties the German boy and girl bring a natural 
love for flowers and out-door life, and the instruction 
in artistic arrangement, floral effects, and so on comes 
easily and naturally. 

All this not only brings vigor and interest to the 
pupils, but it inspires them to start little gardens at 
home, where they take the greatest interest in putting 
their learning into practice. German children go to 
school longer during the year than Americans, having 
only four weeks of vacation in summer, although they 
have two weeks at Christmas, two at Easter, and a 
fall vacation of two weeks in October; so that these 



^ 



Some New Educational Ideas 



283 



school gardens help to give them more out-door Hfe. 
Every two weeks the gardener has a circular printed 
and distributed, telUng what plants are in bloom, 




In the Leipzig School Garden 

what fruits are ripe, and the like, so that every child 
may see them, in this way learning botany by actual 
observation on the ground. This is the more 
necessary because German city children have very 
little opportunity of seeing how the wild plants grow, 



284 Seen in Germany 



because most of the forests and fields that are 
uninhabited are posted with notices forbidding any 
one to enter. The school gardens are open all day 
long and every day but Sundays and holidays, and 
they are very carefully attended by skilled gardeners, 
so that they may be models of perfection for the 
children to follow. These gardens are found in many 
German, Swedish, and French towns, and there are 
a few elsewhere in Europe; but the Americans have 
not yet taken up the idea, and American boys and 
girls lose one of the great joys of school life. 



XI 

A GLIMPSE OF GERMAN STUDENT 

LIFE 



XI 

A GLIMPSE OF GERMAN STUDENT LIFE 

A Corps Duel at Wollnitz 

WE were informed that the duelling would 
begin at eight o'clock in the morning, 
but that if we wished to see a really 
good and bloody duel it would be better 
to come a little later. For this particular day's 
fighting the Hanoverian corps — Hanoverian being 
quite as good a name as the true one — had chosen 
the dorf of Wollnitz, famous for some hundred years 
as the scene of student duels. Wollnitz is a quaint 
bit of red-roofed village, with fat ducks rocking about 
the street in the sunshine. Early in the morning the 
inhabitants go up to the green toy farms which lie 
tip-tilted on the mountain side, and on Saturday the 
students come to fight duels. 

We reached Wollnitz at half-past nine. It had 
been a drive of something more than three miles 
from the University, — a drive of surpassing beauty, 
for the mountains were white with May blossoms, and 
In the valley we caught glimpses of a thread of water 
among spreading green meadows. A turn in the 



288 Seen in Germany 

steep road brought us suddenly upon the gasthof of 
WoUnitz, an odd-gabled and ancient building bearing 
the emblazonment of the Grand Duchy. Across the 
street some eighty students in gay colored caps sat 
quietly drinking beer. The president of the Han- 
overian corps met us at the steps, clicked his heels, 
and bowed solemnly. Then all of the other Hano- 
verians arose, lifted their caps, clicked their heels, and 
bowed, also with solemnity. We took our places on 
the president's right. A huge tin pot of beer stood 
in the middle of the table, and we were served with 
squat wooden mugs, having curious flapper tops 
ornamented with initials and the mysterious geo- 
metric symbols of the corps. The president lifted 
his mug and said, " Prosit." We all lifted our mugs 
in response, and the initial ceremony was over. The 
German student is a man of many formalities. 

At first we had seen no evidences of the duels 
which we had come to see. Everything seemed 
perfectly amicable and tranquil. A rosy-cheeked 
maid was serving sausages and rye bread, and the 
students were joking her good-naturedly. Appar- 
ently there was not even any talk of duelling. But 
presently a student surgeon came in wearing a long 
white blouse. His blue visor cap — the cap of his 
corps — was cocked jauntily on the back of his head 
and his arms, bare to the elbows, were blotched with 
blood. A little later still other surgeons appeared, 




^ 



s 

^ 



g 



290 Seen in Germany 

all more or less bloody, and then we saw a student 
with sundry patches of cotton on his head and face, 
bound down with black bandages fastened under his 
chin. The portions of his face left exposed were 
ashy pale, but he walked steadily and wore his corps 
cap with spirit, if a bit comically, on top of his 
bandages. These students took their places at the 
various tables without eliciting especial interest. It 
so happened that the wounded duellist belonged to 
the Hanoverians, and when he took his place at our 
table his fellow-corpsmen raised their mugs ceremoni- 
ously in his honor, and he responded promptlv, 
drinking as long as the best of them. We were 
informed that it had been a good duel ; a Hano- 
verian explained with some show of pride that the 
other duellist was not yet able to appear. All of 
which was illuminating. 

It seemed that we had arrived in the recess be- 
tween two duels. After a hard battle it takes some 
time for the surgeons to do their work, and while this 
is going on the other duellists and their friends en- 
gage in solemn merriment with beer across the street. 
Everything proceeds with decency and in order. A 
fighting committee composed of a member from each 
student corps arranges the programme of duels, and 
there is never any hitch in the performances. On 
this particular Saturday extra interest had been 
aroused by the presence of three scarred and vet- 



A Glimpse of German Student Life 291 

eran fighters from the University of BerHn, who 
had come down, Uke the knights of old, to fight 
any one who dared to meet them, with or without 
offence. They wore red caps and sat in a far 
corner of the paviHon. It was understood that 
they had all been matched — for the honor of the 
University. There was also a Heidelberg man, but 
the programme was already so well filled that he 
could not be accorded the honor of any more scars. 

The next duel was to be fought between champions 
of two of the other corps, — the Hanoverians fur- 
nishing only the umpire. Of these two the Tyroleans 
wore green caps with green and white ribbons across 
their chests, and the other, the Bavarians, wore purple 
caps with purple, white, and black ribbons. The 
"foxes"— that is, the freshmen — of the green-cap 
corps were clad in brilliant green coats with long tails 
and brass buttons, and instead of the regulation visor 
hats, they wore milk-white fatigue caps of an old-fash- 
ioned military type. Our own Hanoverians wore 
still different colors, both in caps and in ribbons. 
These brilliant color-contrasts gave the scene its own 
strikingly unique interest. 

At last the bloody surgeons having each eaten a 
sausage and consumed a mug of the pale beer, a tall 
student, beer-mug in hand, walked out of the pavil- 
ion, crossed the street, and entered the inn. The 
two corps most directly concerned in the duel soon 



292 Seen in Germany 

followed him, and we who were merely spectators 
came last of all. The duelling hall was a long, low, 
raftered room set about with tables and benches. In 
the centre there was a strip of black canvas, well 
sanded, on which the duellists were to stand. Blood 
was spattered everywhere, on the whitewashed ceil- 
ing above, on the walls and windows at each side, 
and there was fresh evidence of the last duel on 
the floor. The spectators formed a ring about a 
sword's length from the place where the contestants 
were to stand, those behind mounting on the benches 
and tables, until the whole room was walled in with 
human faces, and most of those faces bore the gashes 
and scars of just such conflicts as the one we were 
now to see. Two surgeons came in bringing a bowl 
of some antiseptic solution, a roll of absorbent cotton, 
and a bundle of bandages. They had added oil- 
cloth aprons to their white surgeon's blouses. A 
student in a purple cap arranged a chair at each end 
of the canvas strip, the backs facing. 

And now came the duellists themselves with their 
seconds. An American university crowd would have 
cheered madly, each corps for its favorite fighter ; but 
there was no sign of excitement or enthusiasm here, 
although every eye was fixed on the combatants. 
They were both powerfully built men, so tall that 
when they raised their swords the points barely 
escaped touching the ceiling. Both bore the scars 



A Glimpse of German Student Life 293 

of past duels, and both had the reputation of being 
hard fighters. 

The seconds and the other attendants looked 
narrowly to the adjustment of the armor. And such 
armor as this was ! A knight of the old crusades 
could hardly have been more completely protected. 
Thick leathern stocks or collars covered each com- 
batant's throat, holding his chin squarely in place 
and preventing the possible severing of the jugular 
vein. Thickly upholstered pads covered the shoul- 
ders. The front of the body, from just above the 
heart downward, was protected by a shield not unlike 
that worn by an American baseball catcher, only 
much heavier and thicker. The shields worn by 
both of these duellists had a peculiar bronzed appear- 
ance, which we took at first glance to be the natural 
shade of burnished leather. On closer examination, 
however, we discovered that this color was the result 
of the blood of many battles, — the same armor 
doing service in the duels of an entire corps. Heavy, 
out-jutting spectacles protected the eyes of the 
duellists. They were held in place by stout straps 
which, in passing around the head, bound the ears 
firmly back. We observed, however, that parts of 
the ears protruded above and below the straps, a fact 
accounting satisfactorily for the fashion among ad- 
vanced German students of wearing their ears squared 
either at top or bottom or both. All the combat- 



294 Seen in Germany 

ants' heads, therefore, except the eyes and part of the 
ears, were entirely unprotected, although, as we after- 
wards learned, in some duels there is an agreement 
to permit the covering of the nose, some students 
preferring to retain their noses intact. It is the sole 
purpose of each duellist to cut his opponent some- 
where in the face or head, else the scars will not show 
and much good honor will go to waste. This is the 
chief purpose of the thorough protection of the body 
and the exposure of the face. 

We observed that each second gave especial atten- 
tion to the covering of his chief's sword-arm, which 
consisted of a heavy cloth pad extending from the 
shoulder down to the wrist. The stress of many 
duels had cut the outer covering of this portion of 
each duellist's armor into picturesque and bloody 
tatters. 

And now the opponents are faced, looking squarely 
into each other's eyes, and yet making no sign of 
recognition, and saying nothing, not even to their 
seconds. It is a point of honor that there must be 
no show of emotion. Each wore the gay cap of his 
corps, visor turned behind. As they raised their 
arms, each second stepped quickly forward and fitted 
his chief's gloved hand into the basket handle of the 
sword. A most disagreeable weapon is this sword ! 
Somewhat shorter than a fencing rapier and flatter and 
thinner, square at the point, and as sharp as a razor. 




-« 









296 Seen in Germany 

The combatants step deliberately toward each 
other on the black canvas, until they are exactly a 
sword's length apart. One might almost have 
touched the other with his hand ; they were so near, 
indeed, that we who were uninitiated could hardly 
understand how, with such swords, they could escape 
cutting each other all to pieces. 

With ceremony the umpire mounted a bench at one 
side with a school boy's slate in his hand. The two sec- 
onds, both of whom were armored almost as effectively 
as their chiefs, especially about the eyes and shoul- 
ders, lifted their hats and bowed. The umpire lifted 
his hat. The duellists said nothing at all, but looked 
into each other's eyes. At a word from the umpire 
the seconds removed the corps caps of the duellists, 
so that they stood bareheaded. This is the sign that 
there is no withdrawal. 

The seconds now spring to their places with feet 
wide-spread, each just at the left of his chief. The 
spectators crowd back a pace, for sometimes the 
points of these swords fly far. Each duellist clenches 
his left hand behind him in the lacings of his armor. 
Up go the swords with a flash, the points nearly 
touching the ceiling. There is a moment's pause, 
distressing enough to one not inured to duels. Then 
one second shouts : " Bind swords." 

Instantly each of the seconds rests the point of his 
sword behind that of his chief, so that he may not 



A Glimpse of German Student Life 297 

strike until the final word is given. " Bound," comes 
the reply, followed immediately by the shouted word, 
" Los " (loose). 

There was a downward rush of black-padded 
arms, a flash of swords, a din of clashing steel, and 
then, before the battle seemed fairly begun, there was 
a shouted '' Halt," and the seconds rushed in with 
their swords and threw up the blades of the fighters. 
So quickly was it over with that one imagined there 
must have been some mistake, but this was merely 
the first round. It had lasted perhaps five seconds, 
and there had not been to exceed four swift strokes 
and parries of each duellist's sword. The chief sur- 
geons came up and examined the duellists' heads in 
the most matter-of-fact and business-like manner. 
There were no wounds. A fellow-corpsman lifted 
the sword-arm of each fighter, holding it out horizon- 
tally, and another supported each sword. A duel 
imposes a hard strain on the fighter's sword-arm, 
heavily padded as it is, and it must be thus held up 
between rounds. 

Everything had been done with so much serious- 
ness and formality, especially the examination of 
the surgeons, and the round had been so short and 
so bloodless, that an outsider could not help feel- 
ing that a German student duel had its irresistibly 
humorous side. 

A moment sufficed for the rest. Again the swords 



298 Seen in Germany 



went up, again the seconds shouted, and again at the 
word " Los " the clashing of swords began, this time 
more swiftly and fiercely. Suddenly we saw a lock 
of hair shoot from the head of one of the fighters, 
instantly followed by the shouted " Halt " of the 
seconds and the upward sweep of the swords„ The 
hair had fallen from the purple — Bavarian ; the um- 
pire marked down credits for the green — Tyrolean. 
Again the surgeons made an examination. There 
were no wounds, but there needed no other evidence 
as to the keenness of the blades than the smoothness 
and closeness with which that lock of hair had been 
clipped. We could see the bare place above the 
Bavarian's ear where it had been. The Tyrolean 
corpsman was slightly taller than his opponent, 
though not so powerful of build. He wore a heavy 
black moustache. The Bavarian had been slightly 
pale from the first, but absolutely unwavering. 

The third round was already beginning with that 
peculiarly shrill " Los." Apparently there were only 
two fierce flashes of the swords before the shouted 
" Halt " of the seconds. But this time the surgeons 
hurried forward more eagerly. Across the Bavarian's 
cheek, from the ear nearly to the corner of the mouth, 
there was a long, livid line, just beginning to drip. 
The sword had cut almost through the cheek. Both 
duellists stepped back, and the chairs were advanced 
so that they could lean against the backs : a duellist's 




« 

Q 






300 Seen in Germany 

armor is too stiff for him to sit down comfortably. 
We saw now where all the blood came from. The 
doctors were busy with cotton, but they did not at- 
tempt to put on bandages. We were just beginning 
to feel relieved that blood had at last been shed, and 
that the duel was well over with, when the combatants 
again advanced, measuring a sword's distance between 
them and lifting their blades. Again there were the 
shouted signals, and the fourth round began with 
the din of parried blows. We had quite mistaken 
the nature of a German student duel in thinking that 
first blood counted in any way except on the umpire's 
slate. 

In the fifth round, the Bavarian returned the cut, 
slashing the Tyrolean across the scalp, so deeply that 
the blood instantly gushed down over his forehead and 
from his spectacles to the floor. Again there was a 
rest on the chairs. This wound was so deep that not 
only was cotton applied, but a narrow leather disk was 
passed across it and fastened down to the ear-straps on 
each side. This did not seem, however, to stop the 
flow of the blood. Indeed, the surgeons in these 
duels never attempt to quench the wounds, for the 
excellence of the performance depends on a liberal 
flow of blood. 

After each wound, the swords were wiped with cot- 
ton dipped in the antiseptic solution, for the German 
duellist is nothing if he is not scientific. As the 



A Glimpse of German Student Life 301 

rounds progressed, we saw more clearly how the fight- 
ing was done. There was none of the movement and 
activity of the ordinary swordsman's conflict, none of 
the splendid clash and parry, or advance and retreat. 
The duellists stood stock-still : it was dishonor to 
give way by an inch ; it was dishonor to move the 
head in the least, or to dodge a blow, no matter how 
severe the wound. The entire contest consisted in' 
holding up the sword-arm, and in so using the hand 
and wrist that the point of the sword would slash the 
opponent's head. Much depends on the strength and 
endurance of the right forearm, for upon it fall most 
of the blows, and if it gives way a wound almost cer- 
tainly follows. An old fighter becomes exceedingly 
strong and dextrous with both wrist and forearm ; and 
yet one cannot but reflect that all this training would 
go for nothing if one of these duellists were called 
upon to defend himself from an ordinary sword at-, 
tack, such as a soldier might have to meet. The 
whole training is special, an outgrowth of the student 
duel. 

It was plain that the Tyrolean was the better fighter 
of the two. The longer the duel progressed the fiercer 
became his onslaughts, and in nearly every round he 
struck the Bavarian somewhere on the head or face. 
Blood was spattered everywhere, on the floor, on the 
clothing of the seconds, and on the surgeons. As 
for the duellists themselves, they were literally bathed 



302 Seen in Germany 

in it; it even ran down their bared backs under their 
armor lacings. Once the Bavarian removed a bit of 
tooth which had been broken off as the Tyrolean's 
sword ripped through his cheek. These things are 
not pleasant to relate, nor pleasant to see, but without 
them one cannot arrive at an understanding of what a 
student duel really is. 

Nor were the wounds and the blood the least dis- 
tressing features of the fight. It was a warm morn- 
ing. The room was packed to suffocation with students, 
and, astonishing as it may seem, not one of the win- 
dows was open, and the single small door was blocked 
with spectators. Add to the stifling atmosphere much 
tobacco smoke and the rank smell of beer and blood, 
and a faint conception of the condition of the room may 
be formed. The spectators suffered enough from the 
heat and bad air, but it must have been nothing as 
compared with the torture of the duellists. For both 
of them were muffled in thick padded armor, especially 
at the throat, where its effect would be most painful, 
and at the same time they were exercising violently 
under intense excitement. Both dripped with perspi- 
ration and there were frequent calls for water. The 
Bavarian was ashy pale where the blood had not blurred 
out all view of his face, and it seemed at the close of 
every round that he must certainly drop, but he came 
up cheerfully at each cry of " Los," and went at the 
Tyrolean with vigor and sometimes with effect. The 



A Glimpse of German Student Life 303 

swords flew with incredible swiftness, and the range 
of the duellists was by no means confined to each 
other. After one of the rounds we saw the Bava- 
rian's second clap his hand to the back of his head, 
and when he took it away again out came the blood. 
It sometimes happens that the seconds areas seriously 
wounded as the duellists themselves. Indeed, a stu- 
dent may thus obtain a very conspicuous and honorable 
scar without having to go to the trouble and pain of 
a regular duel. 

At last, at the end of fifteen rounds, the duellists 
were led back and their armor was loosened so that 
they could sit down. We were just congratulating 
ourselves that it was well over with, when we were 
informed that this was only the first half; there were 
fifteen rounds more to fight. The surgeons were very 
busy now for a time, and the fellow-corpsmen of each 
duellist crowded up to give him advice as to how he 
could best defend himself or overreach his opponent. 
The intermission lasted only a few minutes, and then, 
at the cry of the umpire, the men came back to 
their posts. Both walked steadily ; it is a dis- 
honor to waver or flinch. And then the hacking 
began again. 

One of the oddest phases of the duel was the non- 
chalant attitude of the students who came as specta- 
tors. At no time was there a cheer, or a protest, or 
any other manifestation of enthusiasm or excitement, 



^04 Seen in Germany 

although once there was general laughter over the 
retort of one of the seconds as to a charge of 
foul. Many of the students had brought their 
wooden beer mugs into the duelling-room with 
them, and they could be seen drinking from time 
to time, and even proposing in a loud voice the 
health of some one across the room. A bar-maid 
was continually pushing her way in and out among 
the crowd, sometimes at the very elbows of the 
seconds, and once we saw her coming into the room 
with a plate of sausage, cabbage, and rye bread. 
Some one had actually ordered lunch in this room 
of blood. 

The closing fifteen rounds dragged themselves 
slowly along. They were even more bloody than 
the first. It was diflicult to understand how the 
Bavarian stood it to the end, for nearly every round 
brought him a new wound or laid open an old one. 
Toward the end he began to pant with heat and ex- 
haustion, and one of the surgeons examined his heart 
with some care ; and evidently feeling that there was 
danger from this source, he wet a towel in cold water 
and placed it over the heart and just under the edge 
of the armor, and then the fighting went forward 
again with its usual vigor. 

At the close of the duel, astonishing as it may 
seem, both contestants were able to walk upstairs to 
the dressing-room, although the Bavarian looked 




A Uni^verstty Corps House 



306 Seen in Germany 

every moment as if he would go down. His appear- 
ance is not to be described in this place. An hour 
later we saw the Tyrolean walking about, uncon- 
cernedly smoking a cigarette, his colored cap perched 
on top of his bandages. He had not been seriously 
wounded, except for the single cut on top of his head. 
The Bavarian did not appear. 

The duel had lasted in all about forty minutes. 
After it was over, we walked up the crooked road of 
the village between the quaint old houses. The air 
was sweet and fresh with spring and lilac blossoms, 
and the valley, which stretched out before us, lay 
green and peaceful in the sunshine. We saw the 
ancient brewery where the weak white beer that the 
students drink at their bouts is made ; we caught 
the cool, sour smell as we passed the door. And it 
occurred to us now that it was all over, to inquire what 
was the cause of the bloody battle we had seen. 
Surely these men must have been mortal enemies ; 
there must have been an unforgivable offence, possi- 
bly a romance behind it all. But never were we 
more mistaken. This was merely an arranged duel, 
we were informed. Of course there might have 
been an offence ; it occasionally happened that there 
was really an offence. But this was a regular Satur- 
day duel. The two men had been picked by the 
committee, matched according to their physical 
strength and condition, as well as by their past per- 



A Glimpse of German Student Life 307 



formances, and a time had been set for them to fight. 
And they could not escape fighting without dishonor. 
A student who dons the colored cap of a corps, vir- 
tually offers a challenge to meet any comer with 
swords, and a student who does not join a corps 
must expect none of the glories and honors and con- 
sideration of the social side of a university career. He 
is nobody. The fighting goes on every Saturday in 
some of the litde towns around the University, so 
many duels each week. The University actually pro- 
vides and pays a teacher of swordsmanship, from whom 
the students learn the art of duelling, and then, by 
constant practising, they secure some degree of skill. 
And yet many duels are fought by new men who have 
had little or no practice, and it is merely a matter 
of standing up and taking a bloody slashing. We 
heard one student encouraging another who was 
to fight a duel. It was, "Come, go in and get some 
good scars " ; it was not, " Go in and give the other 
man some good scars." Scars are curiously regarded 
by the German student. If they argue anything at 
all, they certainly argue a woful lack of skill at 
swordsmanship, for a really good swordsman should 
so defend himself that he would receive no wounds. 
Yet every scar is a badge of the greatest honor. 
Many duellists who are unfortunate in receiving all 
the wounds on the scalp where the hair covers them, 
go with close-cropped head so that their honor may 



308 Seen in Germany 

be apparent. The scar most prized is the long, deep 
cut across the cheek, just such a one as the Bavarian 
fighter had received in the duel which we had seen. 
We heard it whispered that sometimes a student came 
by his scars in roundabout ways, — little accidents 
with razors ; but one scarcely credits such a story, 
because it is much too simple a matter to obtain scars 
by the legitimate and highly honorable method of the 
duel. All this blood and slashing is accompanied by 
the most excruciating pain in healing, especially in 
cases where the cheek is cut through, and sometimes 
a student is compelled to wear bandages and a black 
cap, and eat porridge for weeks ; but he may comfort 
himself in his suffering with the assurance that there 
is no higher badge of honor than the black " duel 
hat." 

Is a duellist ever killed ^ 

In one of the corps houses of this University hangs 
a picture of a young student, with the point of a 
duelling sword framed near it. During the duel the 
sword had snapped, and the razor-like point had been 
driven into the duellist's heart. But a killing in a 
duel is comparatively rare. The greatest danger 
arises from blood-poisoning, the surgeons being only 
medical students, and often ill-equipped for dealing 
with such surgical cases. There have also been 
deaths from heart failure, due to over-exertion, heat, 
and loss of blood. 



A Glimpse of German Student Life 309 

Duelling has now obtained such a hold on German 
student life that, although laws against it are in exis- 
tence, little or no attempt is made to enforce them. 
There is an impression, born, perhaps, of the military 
spirit, that duelUng produces strong and brave men. 
Formerly there was always a sentinel to report the 
coming of the police, and that formality is still 
observed in many cases, because it gives an added 
spice to the sport. If there is really an offence 
between the duellists, and occasionally there is, the 
fight may be with sabres and half-bare arms. This 
is considerably more serious than the sword duels, and 
it is understood that the police will try to prevent it. 
At the duels we saw, not the slightest precautions were 
taken in the way of sentinels, and any one who had an 
acquaintanceship among the students was perfectly at 
liberty to come in and see the battle. In fact, there 
were a number of spectators, evidently residents of the 
town, whose presence could have been explained only 
by the fact that they have been on hand at the time 
and had invested twenty pfennigs in a mug of the 
gasthof beer. 

When we returned to our places at the beer table 
in the pavilion, the students were singing a rollicking 
student song and the surgeons were just coming in 
from their work on the poor Bavarian. We remained 
for one more duel, and then, although the perform- 
ance continued until late in the afternoon, — that is. 



3^0 Seen in Germany 

all day long, — we had enough of it, and were glad to 
get away. The last we saw of our friend, the presi- 
dent of the Hanoverians, was on the stairway of the 
inn, his face gashed and indescribably bloody. He, 
too, had fought. 



XII 

THE NEW GERMANY, HER PROSPERITY 
AND HER PROBLEMS 



XII 
THE NEW GERMANY 

Her Prosperity and Her Problems 

THE new Germany, as a whole, gives an 
observer the impression of tremendous 
activity and vitality, of change and im- 
provement. One who visits the ancient 
town of Nuremberg looking only for the quaint 
evidences of mediaeval grandeur and power will be 
astonished by the signs of present-day enterprise, — 
the smoking chimneys, the roaring street traffic, the 
busy shops, the brilliant lights. 

Nuremberg is western and progressive — and yet 
not more so than the other great cities of Germany. 
Berlin has been growing more rapidly in the last 
decade than Chicago. In the twenty years from 
1875 to 1895, the city more than doubled its popu- 
lation; while Hamburg gained 146 percent., Munich 
140 per cent., and Leipzig, famed once for its sleepy 
streets and ancient university, made the remarkable 
gain of 26^ per cent. Expansion and prosperity are 



314 Seen in Germany 

everywhere ; splendid new buildings and factories, 
new ships, new canals, new railroads. No man of 
the present age is nore fully alive to his own powers, 
his interests, his weaknesses, than the German, and 
none is struggling harder to advance along all lines 
of human development. The Englishman has gone 
to sleep content with his own commercial supremacy 
and greatness ; the American is not yet fully awake 
to his own power; the Frenchman frets himself with 
visions of a greatness that is gone ; but the German 
is fully alive to every world-condition, establishing 
banks and business in South America, buying islands 
of Spain, boldly taking the lead in the Chinese 
troubles, extending his colonies in Africa, preparing 
to absorb Austria and possibly Asia Minor, building 
a splendid new navy, stretching the lines of his 
merchant marine around the world, and putting his 
manufactured products into the homes of every 
nation on earth. Germany has laid the foundation 
of her industries on the bed-rock of science and 
thorough technical education, to a degree equaled 
by no other nation. Thirty years ago coal-tar was 
almost unknown to German industry; between 1877 
and 1890 no fewer than 800 patents were taken out 
on coal-tar derivatives, and in 1898 the industries 
connected with the utilization of coal-tar — a former 
waste material — yielded over 117,000,000 in prod- 
ucts. That is a sample of what the intelligent prac- 



The New Germany 3 i 5 



tical application of science has done. Fifty years 
ago the German was the world's typical dreamer, 
musician, poet, scholar ; then he became the world's 
philosopher, scientist, and educator, and now he is 
appearing as a great man of affairs, of world politics, 
of giant industries. 

Yet no other great nation in the world to-day is per- 
plexed with such weighty and difficult problems, re- 
lating both to external and internal affairs, as Germany. 
No other great nation is torn by such diversities of 
opinion regarding economic and political questions, or 
presents such seemingly irreconcilable contrasts and 
changing relationships. In the cities, for instance, 
there exists a fierce socialistic and often revolu- 
tionary spirit, and opposed to this is the obsti- 
nate conservatism of the aristocratic Agrarians or 
land-owners (Yunkers), the latter demanding pro- 
tection to agriculture with higher duties on imported 
food-stuffs, and the former, the wage-workers, demand- 
ing free trade and cheaper food. Between these two 
powerful opponents in the social and political scale, 
there lies seemingly a bottomless chasm, and it needs 
all the astuteness and power of the government, even 
with such a man as the young emperor at its head, 
to keep them together until Germany shall have de- 
veloped a large and sensible middle class. Here also 
is the old German tendency to free thought and high 
culture set over against a government that will not 



316 Seen in Germany 

permit free speech, a free press, or free assemblage 
for the discussion of certain questions of administra- 
tion and poHtics, — a government that punishes with 
an iron hand for " lese-majeste." Here is a vast 
and bloated militarism standing in contrast to a pro- 
fessed desire and a real need of peace, a huge armv 
and navy costing millions in taxes and taking half a 
million men from agriculture and the industries, when 
there are not enough laborers to till the fields. 
Yet an army Germany must have, for jealous enemies 
crowd close on every side. The nation itself is hardly 
yet a nation; it is made up of many states, each 
more or less jealous of the others ; the Catholics of 
the south distrust the Lutherans of the north, the 
Saxon dislikes the Prussian, and the Bavarian sus- 
pects both ; then there are half-loyal Poles in East 
Germany, French in the Rhine countrv, Danes in 
Schleswig-Holstein. From all these diverse elements 
of population, loyalty, if it proceed not from desire, 
is demanded by force. It is a constant struggle 
between the centrifugal force exerted by twenty-five 
states, which only thirty years ago were separate 
sovereignties, and the centripetal force of the power- 
ful Prussian monarchy, with an iron-handed Hohen- 
zollern at its head. More than one prophet during 
the past thirty years, who has seen all these dark 
problems, has predicted the speedy downfall of 
German political institutions ; yet Germany still 



The New Germany 317 



stands, a great and powerful nation, and one cannot 
but feel that the sober and practical sense of the 
German citizen, combined with an intelligent and 
powerful administration, will ultimately prevail, and 
that Germany will continue to go forward and 
upward. 



THE END 



J 82 



